


Shadow of a Mushroom Cloud

by tragakes (lejf)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Illustrated, Kind of? I will add more pictures when/if I draw them., Minor Character Death, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Build, Some politics, Space AU, Titans, War, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2018-12-26 19:13:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12065280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/tragakes
Summary: As they were about to leave port, Petra said, “Captain, we’ve got stowaways.” She was holding them by the scruffs of their shirts: a futilely struggling boy and a dark-haired girl whose sullen gaze burned a hole into the floor of the ship.“Throw them out,” Levi replied, without looking up from his controls.*Space AU. Involving: A war, space titans, love, and an increasingly demanding journey through the universe.





	1. X2229

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Science. While some basics of astrophysics are explained, not all of it is true.

 “Look!” Out over the uneven rooftops of the city, the port could be seen, a long silver streak like the seamless back of a space-whale. Through all hours of the night, ships would dock in, scuffed around the edges and looking worse for the wear, with paint-jobs that had been paid for in the underground and parts that had been scavenged from wreckages. Tonight proved an exception because an actual _fighter_ was descending into it, sleek and armoured like a blade, other tin-bucket ships seeming to part way for it. “I wonder what it’s here for…”

There were three teenagers on a rusting roof overlooking the town, caught up in the breathlessness of the enormity of the sky, Mikasa’s scarf twisting like a red flag behind them. They’d never seen a finer spacecraft. While there were tales that circulated the inns of enormous liners and battleships that blotted out the sun, nothing remotely close had ever passed by their planet.

“It’s probably the military looking for somebody,” Armin said.

“Do you think we could convince them to take us with them?”

“Probably not…”

“We can make them,” Mikasa interjected. “We’ll fight them until they realise we’re worthy.”

“They might just shoot us.” 

“But this is a perfect chance!” Eren said, standing. The roof creaked dangerously below him, its old iron and copper pipes groaning, but none of them were concerned. This was a usual haunt for them. It wouldn’t give way, because it hadn’t ever yet. “The military never comes here even to _recruit_. How else are we going to get up there and fight?” He raised a hand toward the constellations. Out there was where the real battles were happening, where there was simultaneously expansive freedom and the crushing proximity of titans.

The three of them had lived their whole lives on planet X2229 in the slums on the outskirts of the city, although the city itself resembled one enormous metal slum more than anything else. Substance abuse, human trafficking, illegal trade — where the law flowed freely, so did information. The more Eren thought about it, the more he was convinced Armin was right. The military must’ve come looking for _information_ , and the whereabouts of criminals. 

“We should confirm that’s even a military ship first,” Armin said. “It might just be one really rich person coming to buy slaves.”

Eren’s gut didn’t agree, but he had full trust in Armin’s judgement. They’d been too far to see the details of the ship, so they hadn’t been able to tell if it was just a decorative fighter or a proper one. Beside him, Eren saw Mikasa nod and stand, steady on her feet.

She had a name for herself in their city. Normal folk — fellow scourge — recognised the steel-like resolve in her eyes and billowing scarf. Of course, the bigger gangs didn’t balk, and the three of them didn’t involve themselves with the gangs in return, but the sight of Mikasa standing there, silhouetted, reminded Eren that they _were_ capable, and _were_ strong enough to try reach for the stars. 

Without another word, Mikasa leapt to the next roof. Armin and Eren followed, their boots pattering along sheets of corrugated metal like rain, bounding across the city of darkness and lights. It was the only city on the entire planet, kept warm by volcanic activity while the rest of it spanned as icy mountainous terrain; but because the planet had an axial tilt of over a hundred degrees, and because it was currently winter, there was no hour in the ‘day’ that the city received sunshine. 

Planet X2229 was a hub for illegal activity because it was too far from the military and the royal family’s home solar system, socially unmanageable and not economically promising enough to bother expending resources in, but it was still not the furtherest planet out in the galaxy, and that made it a feasible trip for pirates coming and going from Andromeda. 

Cobbled streets passed by beneath them, the people busy in their routines, haggling with vendors and with each other, a few fist-fights breaking out, the glow of storefront signs and the interior of stores, the ringing of metal as weapons were smelted in the depths of forges of the heart of the volcano and the chatter among customers, and— Mikasa stopped suddenly, and Armin and Eren skidded to a halt beside her. She was looking intently into the crowd.

“I thought I saw…” she began, but trailed off in favour of frowning. “Just some people who looked like they knew how to handle themselves. Could be anybody. Let’s keep going.”

The military, if they knew what they were doing, would be taking care to appear like normal citizens. It wouldn’t be so easy to spot them, and even less easy to confirm, so the trio didn’t waste their time trying to verify Mikasa’s suspicions and instead continued through the city that they knew like the back of their hands. The port was growing steadily closer, cresting like an enormous wave that Eren had heard about in the stories of some drunken travellers. Waves. Oceans. Entire planets with surfaces covered only in water that surged miles high. 

Other people must’ve seen the ship dock. They wouldn’t be the only ones going to investigate — security would be tight, but Eren had confidence that they would be able to get closer than the normal curious street urchin. What he believed made them stronger was the fact that they had each other. Before their parents had died, they had already been friends. Afterwards, when everything had dissolved into chaos, they had banded together under Armin’s sharp mind, Mikasa’s deadly speed, and Eren’s sheer determination.

Last summer they had snuck onto one of the ships in the port and stolen its weapons and cargo, selling them on the market to fetch themselves dinners and better knives. They sold it all because a firearm was useless to keep if it would attract unwanted attention, and because it would demand constant ammunition, but Eren hoped to one day hold a weapon like that again, and _own_ it.

Sneaking close to another ship shouldn’t have been impossible. They dropped back to street level as they reached the port. It bracketed the mainland over the edge of a cliff, requiring ships to dock from below. The port hadn’t chosen a retracting roof because then they wouldn’t have to handle rain or stormy conditions breaking electrical equipment, and also because this way the roof could be reinforced if an attack ever came from above. The cliff-face itself was filled with a network of tunnels and cannons should a hostile ship ever board.

Those changes had all been made after the titan attack.

Eren’s hands balled into fists at the mere memory of it. He knew some people resented the military and the royal family for not protecting them, but he thought that opinion was ridiculous — the very point of the planet was that it fell out of their jurisdiction. The hatred should’ve been directly solely towards the titans.

He was tugged out of his reverie by the sight of port guards in their uniforms standing at attention outside one of the closed hangars, people milling around. 

“We have a few options,” Armin said. “We could break into the port logs, the hangar, or bribe a guard into talking.”

“We can do it,” Mikasa said. They knew which she meant.

*

The wind was whistling fiercely around them, Eren’s hair blowing in disarray. Mikasa seemed to have tied her scarf more tightly than usual, too, in case it flew away. Below them gaped the abyss and freezing wind. They were clinging to the outside of the port, edging their way down to a small maintenance platform and hatch they knew each hangar had. If one of them fell, it’d be the end. 

The gale itself was unpredictable, sometimes howling so loudly that Eren couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat. The port’s face itself was smooth glass and almost devoid of holds. They were standing on what were essentially window-ledges. If anybody was in the hangar, they would see Mikasa and Eren climbing down from ledge to ledge. 

His hands were beading sweat, though they instantly cooled against the wind. Mikasa looked as unflappable as ever, climbing, though Eren sensed that she was concentrating very intently. Eren lowered himself as far as he could from his ledge, looking down, before dropping down to the lower level, his balance tipping back, towards the endless drop, but then Mikasa’s hand slammed into his shoulder, pinning him against the glass. He gave her a wordless smile of gratitude and she nodded in return.

The whole time they were counting down in their heads. Armin outside would give the guards a diversion, just in case there were guards inside the hangar, though there shouldn’t have been, because Armin presumed the military knew even the guards weren’t above stealing the ship.

By the time Eren’s legs touched down onto the maintenance platform, they were shaking slightly. The platform itself wasn’t very stable either, made of mesh, swaying under their weight, a hand-rail on only one side. It stopped before the hatch, which was above the platform, in the bottom of the hangar. They knew the hatch would be locked — precisely why they always carried lock-picks — but the platform didn’t extend under the hatch. It was too high and far to reach while still standing there. Exchanging a quick glance with Eren, Mikasa tied her scarf around her waist and to the handrail, Eren triple-checking the knots, and held her lock-picks in between her teeth before she jumped for the hatch’s handle. She caught it, and her legs swung. Then she held on with one hand while the other took out the lock-picks, balancing the tension wrench on her little finger and shifting the other pin as she hung there mid-air, holding onto the handle with one hand. 

It was awful going. Eren’s stomach felt as though it’d give out any moment. All he could do was keep a steady grip where the scarf was tied onto the rail and the scarf itself.

Then her finger slipped and the lock-picks tumbled out of her hands, and when she lurched out to catch them the movement made her precarious hold on the handle slip. She fell and Eren lunged forwards and grabbed the scarf as far forwards as he could, holding onto the handrail with a hand so tight it was white, his heart leaping into his throat as she swung wide, suspended only by the scarf she had tied and that he was clutching, the entire gaping maw of nothing below her. The whole platform rocked up and down with her sudden weight and creaked ominously. He hauled her back upwards, back onto the platform, where he held onto her shoulders for a moment and breathed desperately, then handed her his set of lock-picks. 

Mikasa still looked supremely undisturbed. After rechecking the knots, she jumped for the hatch again, catching it steadily, eyes completely focused as she picked the hatch’s lock with one hand.

When it gave, it yawned open and a ladder slid down. Mikasa locked her legs around the ladder. Eren let himself breathe for the first time in a while, then untied her scarf from the handrail and reached out for the ladder himself, extending a hand to her as she swapped sides on the ladder, and they both ascended into the hangar.

Eren’s first thought was that it was worth it. Then Mikasa shoved him from below and he hurriedly emerged fully into the hangar, where a gorgeous ship spanned the length of the floor with bronze-silver plating and dim green lights. It gave him the impression of dormant power and deadly edges. At least six turret heads were withdrawn along its top, and it was surprisingly flat and streamlined, like a chisel or a knife. Before he knew it, he was walking straight up to the ship and around it, tracing it with his fingers.

He wished he could fly on something like this some day. 

On its other side he found the symbol of the Space Corps and his heart stopped once again. “Mikasa!” he exclaimed. “They’re the _Space Corps_!”

“The military, then,” she said, examining the ship herself, reaching up to touch the underside absently. At her hand, almost silently — and to Eren’s shock — it slid open and a jet black ramp descended like a beast kneeling to its master.

Eren stared, and then stared some more. So did Mikasa. “Do you think it’s a trap?” Eren asked. There was no way something like- like _this_ would be inviting them on board.

She shrugged, then stepped foot onto the ramp. “Mikasa!” Eren hissed, but no gun pointed at them, and no alarm rang. 

“It’s a good opportunity,” she replied, and then disappeared into its depths. He leapt after her, irrationally — or maybe rationally — anxious that it had somehow eaten her alive, but as he ascended he found that she was just standing there on the deck, looking around at the sleek and dark interior of the ship that was slowly lighting up, its walls traced with circuitry and closed compartments.

A huge rumbling behind them meant that the hangar doors were opening. For a moment Eren’s legs locked and mind froze. How could they have come back so quickly? Where to hide? Then Mikasa grabbed him by the collar and hauled him deeper into the ship, down a featureless corridor lined with shut doors. 

“Wait, Mikasa, we—“ He looked back, only to see that the ramp they ascended had withdrawn and closed. They were stuck in the dead space of the ship where stillness filled its halls. “—It _was_ a trap!”

A door slid open seamlessly at her touch, revealing a bland sleeping quarters that was obviously unused. They slunk into a corner, Mikasa looking aware and alert, Eren’s mind racing. Why would the Space Corps set a trap for someone like them? Wasn’t it a terrible gamble to make? What if they had gone to the helm instead and sabotaged the machinery? 

The walls were poorly sound-proofed, but Eren thought that that might’ve been intentional. He could hear footsteps approaching and loud voices, and most importantly—

“Who boarded?”

They knew someone had entered the ship. If the Space Corps found them, what would happen? Would they just be cast out of the ship or executed there on the spot? The Space Corps weren’t people to mess with. How about Armin? Was he alright out there? 

The door in front of them slid open and Eren barely had the time to open his mouth before a hand descended on him and dragged him out, kicking and struggling, though even if he got free he had no further plans. “Captain!” the person holding him called. “We’ve got stowaways.” She was still clothed in a featureless black cloak, which the crew must’ve worn when they went out into the city, and was a surprisingly pretty woman with earnest brown eyes and a strong grip on Mikasa and Eren as she hauled them towards the main deck. The ramp there was open. 

“Throw them out,” someone replied tonelessly up the front of the ship. 

“Yes, sir!” 

Mikasa wasn’t protesting — this was one of the least harmful outcomes, after all, but Eren could feel a mounting frustration shared between them that their efforts had been dashed by the fact that the Space Corps were leaving so soon. “We just want to fight titans and join the military! Please, sir!”

They completely ignored his outburst. As they began to descend the ramp, he heard shouting — by Armin, who had seen them. “Mikasa! Eren!” He was being held by port guards near the hangar doors, mirroring Eren’s struggle.

At the same instant, “Wait—“ and there was a man suddenly standing at the top of the ramp, the same voice of the person who had just ordered them thrown out, watching them with baleful eyes. He stood like a person with authority who expected to be answered, legs slightly apart, one hand gripping the frame of the ship. “How did you get on board?”

And a great explosion rocked the ship and sent shattered glass through the air; Eren saw, through the hangar doors, a hand burst through the roof of the port. Guards scattered and shouts and screaming rose, a deep wailing alarm sounding out throughout the city like a cry. It brought him back to his most fearful days, helpless and cowering under the rampaging wrath of titans.

Steam billowed from the enormous fleshy hand, its fingertips protruding claws of metal that raked long strips down the main floor of the port, steel curling up around it. Titans assimilated ships they had destroyed and used them as weapons. The docking station, laden with ships, must have presented itself like a feast.

He saw a fleeing guard snatched up by the hand, her clothes burning at the touch and starting to smoke. The guard opened her throat to scream in pure, hair-raising, fear. The people were unprepared and forgetful of the titan attack ten years ago. This had happened because they were at _war_! Attack could come at any time — but how were they supposed to defend against this?!

“Eren!” Armin had broken free and was making a break for them. The rest of his words were lost in the shriek of metal as the roof of the port was peeling open like a can, revealing the night sky and a gaping face with bulging eyes and peeled-back lips.

“You’re an Ackerman, aren’t you?” the captain asked in a voice that was too smooth for the chaos around them, staring at Mikasa, who didn’t reply, but apparently didn’t need to, because the captain said, “Petra, we’re keeping the girl.” Eren’s head whipped around and he glared. They weren’t taking Mikasa from him.

“Yes, sir!” the woman holding them bellowed to be heard, “and Oluo, hurry up!”Another man was throwing the switch to open the side of the hangar, the gate — the one that would let the ship fly out and leave, and with a deep rumble the gate doors began to slide apart. 

“If you don’t let my friends on board I’ll never cooperate,” Mikasa said to the captain at the same moment a panting Armin had reached the foot of the ramp. 

“Mikasa! Eren! What are you doing?! There’s a _titan_! We have to get out!” 

“I don’t have time for this,” the captain said, looking away to the front of the ship. “Take them in. Tie them up. Bring them to the helm—and get to your stations!”

“Yes, sir!” both members of the Space Corps replied.

“Wait, what?” Armin asked, before Oluo grabbed him and carried him under his arm. “Hey!”

“Engines,” the captain said, and the ship responded to his voice, a low purr starting below them.

The ramp withdrew. As soon as it shut, outside noise was deafened, the titan’s destruction cut out, and the three of them were hauled to the helm where the captain was already seated, screens splayed out in front of him above a countless spread of switches and displays that his fingers were dancing across. Petra and Oluo swiftly tied them all up and left them there, vanishing down the corridor of the ship, their boots echoing. 

Armin’s eyes were darting nervously about their surroundings, seeming to take in the monitors that provided an entire 360 view of the hangar around the ship, the opening gate, and a radar that was filled with a flood of people racing out of the port. 

Eren was certainly not prepared when the engine roared to life and the ship burst out of the port like a bullet, a second explosion rocking the port. It took him a moment to realise the explosion had been made by  _them_ when they broke the sound barrier. He tumbled into and over Mikasa, hearing Armin squeak, as the ship pulled up and kept pulling up until the three of them — the only things not anchored down — rolled up the walls and even onto the ceiling because the ship was flying faster than the speed of sound, upside-down.

While Eren was too dizzy and disoriented to keep his eyes on the monitors, Armin saw the endless span of the planet beneath them and the titan scroll past on the screen, towering above the port, stripping away buildings and catchingships out of the air. Then the ship smoothly flipped over, though it didn’t feel smooth to them, Eren and Armin shouting as they hit the deck again. 

“Petra!” the captain called, and in that instant they saw what looked like a missile cross the monitors. It arced like a wire string, so swift that it hardly caught the light before it was gone, weaving towards the titan and slicing across the back of it, blood spraying through the mist-like steam of the titan. 

Eren was left speechless at the sight of a titan, so formidable and destructive, slain so easily. Its enormous body stumbled, then lost its balance and fell, smashing half of the port before its weight carried it over the edge of the cliff, tumbling down into the treacherous mountains of X2229 followed by shards of debris.

This was why he was determined to join the military. To be able to fight and take down titans like that. “That was amazing!” he said, unable to keep exhilaration out of his voice.

“Shut up,” the captain replied.

His ears were ringing and teeth chattering as the ship tore through the atmosphere — and Eren really was buzzing now, filled with the excitement of being on a spaceship for the first time in his life and witnessing a titan kill — into space, where the stars still looked as far as they did when they were on the planet and everything was dark, endless, and free. He could see the sun, distantly, on one of the monitors, a bright spark in the depthless black; and below them loomed their planet, dark blue from space, the city already invisible through the atmosphere and the clouds roiling in turmoil as though they sensed a storm brewing. Further out into the expanse, other planets hung in gravitational equilibrium, where they looked shockingly small compared to the distance that separated them, even though Eren knew they were also teeming with life and cities larger than the one he had spent his entire life in. 

In the darkness, however, where Eren had expected everything to be still, something _shifted_. Titans were uncoiling from dormant black balls, eyes moving to the ship — a prime piece of technology to assimilate.

“Petra. Oluo. Eld. Gunther. We’ve got twenty more waiting up here in the system.”

Twenty?! In just their solar system?

“Engaging jump in t minus thirty,” the captain said. Eren couldn’t see his expression from here, but he couldn’t imagine would be like to remain level in situations where they were surrounded by not one by _twenty_ titans.

“Excuse me,” Armin suddenly said. “Sir?”

“If you have any comments, they can wait.” 

Despite all the admiration Eren held for his skills, the captain really was rude. 

Armin said, “Word is, sir, that when titans steal ships… they don’t just take the engines materials, they take the warp drives as well.” If they had warp drives, they could follow the residue of the captain’s jump — perhaps to the heart of the human civilisation.

A dark silence fell over them. Eren recalled hearing the rumour: They’d been scavenging some of the riskier alleys, known to hold bodies of some of the bigger gangs’ disposals, and had overhead the conversation from subordinate to boss through a cracked window. 

“Say that again,” the captain ordered. “Where did you hear this?”

“It’s a very recent development,” Armin said, looking nervous under the captain’s attention. “Some titans can use warp drive, if they’re compatible. You probably haven’t heard of it because the people who found out… they’re all dead.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” the captain said. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hasty sketch of Levi's ship, the SOS, with an Eren size comparison, though I think Eren is a little too big:
> 
>   
> 


	2. Departure

“I would suggest against warping to populated drive locations, sir.” Armin seemed unsure whether or not he was over-stepping boundaries, giving advice to a _Space Corps_ captain. “The destruction titans could wreak on unsuspecting ships…”

The captain didn’t give a signal that he’d heard, but his fingers were again flying across his monitors. “Erwin,” he barked, “we’ll be jumping to you in one hundred. Up to twenty titans in pursuit.”

“We’re holding in for another six hundred,” he communicated to his crew. “Don’t engage.”

600… 100… a 500 second difference, which meant ‘Erwin’ — Eren swore the name he’d heard somewhere, presumably on the streets — was also somewhere close by, probably in the very same solar system. Radio waves, which all ships communicated with, travelled at the speed of light; but the speed of light wasn’t infallible. Andromeda itself was over 200,000 light years across. A transmission sent from one end would take 200,000 years to reach the other. And that wasn’t even including the universe’s constant expansion. For those reasons, communication and fore-planning became crucial. The captain’s confident calculations only fuelled Eren’s appreciation. He was clearly extremely experienced when it came to not just being in space, but working with others in space. 

Eren glanced over at both Mikasa and Armin, who were watching the captain’s every move. 3-meter titans lurched into view in his screens, stolen ship thrusters propelling them forwards, fuelled on who-knew-what. Titans themselves could exist in the vacuum of space because their only weakness was slitting the back of their neck. They didn’t require oxygen, only light, and space was filled with more than enough light. For most of them, their skin was blackened where they had been roasting under the sunlight for long enough to burn.

The three of them were sent careening into a wall again as the ship tilted to dodge another titan that surged out of nowhere. There was no gravity in space, but the captain must have turned on an artificial field at some point, and it was their inertia that send them tumbling around.

The titans were grotesque, mouths open, hair drifting around them in the impression of corpses that had drowned underwater, and they floated using engines and thrusters that were imbedded in different places on their bodies, on the ends of hands and feet and backs… some of them were clearly more proficient in manoeuvring than others, and it made Eren feel slightly uneasy because it made it seem as though they had the capacity to learn. 

The captain executed manoeuvre after manoeuvre flawlessly, dodging titans as they came but making no real progress through space. Eren suspected that there were more than twenty at this point. Everywhere he looked on the monitors more seemed to be appearing. The emptiness of space, he was slowly realising, was shifting, filled hidden enemies. 

Then they were plunged into warp drive without warning, space slurring around them to carry the ship and all its occupants through its belly in an instant — if faster than light travel was impossible due to the relativistic effects of mass and the requirement of infinite energy to move infinite mass, there was a loophole in that _space itself_ could part ways to move. 

Eren felt like the balls of his eyes were grinding back into his skull, and that his lungs were being squeezed into pulp. Mikasa just leaned back and closed her eyes, looking serene, though Eren was unconvinced by her nonchalance.

At some point he had closed his eyes too, because he had reopened them to the sound of laser fire, the captain leaping out of his seat, and the comms carrying an unfamiliar voice, “Levi, did you find him?” Another ship was present on the monitor screens now, and it reminded Eren of a snowflake that had been bent back, or an arrow-head with many bristles. It was flat but pointed, fanning out at the back with the glow of blue engine flames, slicing through the darkness of space.

“I did. He lost the entire shipment, and he told the people. Guess he felt some sort of guilt,” the captain said, pressing a hand to the wall, which slid open to reveal a spectacular array of blades and other gear Eren could put no name to. Without hesitation the captain grabbed two blades, a helmet, some sort of grappling gear, and turned away, leaving the helm entirely.

“Hey!” Eren called after him, through Armin’s coughing from the lingering sensation of the warp drive.“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to take a shit,” the captain said, voice muffled.

“What?” He fought against his binds in protest. “Who’s flying the ship?!”

As soon as the captain left their sight, Mikasa rolled forwards, flicking off one of her shoes, a knife skidding out across the floor. Eren fell forwards and grasped it in his hands awkwardly, and he sawed Mikasa’s bindings open while Armin kept an eye on the monitors. “What’s wrong with these people?” Eren muttered.

“He’s gone to his smaller fighter. One of those blade-ships,” Armin said. On the monitors another one of those missile-like ships flashed by, too quickly to spot the captain that he knew was in the cockpit. 

“Who’s piloting this one, then? Do we?!”

“He’s still piloting this ship—”

A titan suddenly unfurled from what Eren had thought to be empty space, its hand reaching out for the ship, and for a moment Eren thought that this was it. It was the end. The Space Corps had left them here to die, but then the ship spun ninety degrees and flew straight through its outstretched fingers, between the space of the index and the third, close enough that Eren could see the textures and fissures in the giant’s skin.

“—remotely,” Armin finished from where they’d slid into the wall.

The captain was simultaneously flying a blade-ship, slitting open the back of titan’s necks, as well ascontrolling the main one. The amount of concentration and pure technical skill that would’ve required— “That’s… That’s incredible!” 

“Right,” Mikasa said, standing. “So what are we going to do?” She looked up at the corner of the room, as if suddenly realising that if the captain was so capable at multitasking, he must have been keeping eye over them as well. 

Outside, the titans were being slain by the second. Their wide eyes seemed alarmed as the light blade-ships darted by too far for them to follow, wings gleaming with titan blood. Eren’s veins were singing with the fight. He wanted to be out there, in the stars, bringing down titans, hurtling through space at incredible speeds. 

“I don’t think we need to do anything,” Armin admitted.

“But we _could_. Titans are right there! They must have extra fighters!”

“Don’t be crazy.” Mikasa cuffed him around the head. “You don’t know how to fly a ship.”

“I can _try_.“ 

“That’d—”

The screens lit up completely white. 

“—be…” Mikasa trailed off, staring.

At first, Eren thought it was an electrical malfunction, but the whiteness faded and he realised there was glinting debris floating in space that hadn’t been there before, and enormous chunks of some titans were missing but slowly regrowing, great globs of blood ballooning up in space. A few of the blade-ships had slowed, titans seeming to converge on the ones that did. Oulo’s head floated by. Part of his spinal cord was still attached, glistening wet. 

The cold deck hit his hands because Eren had stumbled backwards. “T–they had a bomb. One of them had a bomb.“

His mother had told him stories about a bomb when he was younger, a bomb so enormous it had lit up the entire galaxy for a moment and burned itself forever into the universe’s memories.

Armin and Mikasa didn’t respond. All eyes were fixed on the screens, where the remaining blade-ships were attempting to fend off the titans that were reaching for the slowing ships whose pilots must’ve passed out from the heat of the blast, or whose engines had been destroyed. In the distance he saw the cockpit of a ship flip open, and out leapt — there was no mistaking that stature — the captain, grappling through the vacuum of space to rescue his comrades. 

Mikasa had her hands on the wall suddenly, which slid open in response to her to reveal the array of weapons and gear as the captain had previously selected from. She took the same things as the captain had, throwing some to Eren and Armin. No one raised an objection. If there was another titan with a warhead and the ship flew apart, they needed to survive. The gear looked surprisingly natural on Mikasa, grappling hook at her side, helmet on, both blades held in one hand. Contrarily, Armin put one of the blades back. 

The captain was hauling someone out of their vessel and onto his back, other ships shooting past them and eliminating titans. A hand slipped through the defences, reaching for the captain, who somehow leapt into action, circled around the titan’s arm, eviscerating it as he used it to propel himself closer to the vessel he’d left unattended.

“Ship,” Mikasa said, “pull up.”

“You are not authorised to make that command,” the ship replied in a wholly robotic tone, that — midst the absurdity and surreality of everything — reminded Eren of the captain.

Mikasa turned and ran for the corridor. “Ship,” she called, turning on her heel to stop at a door marked AIRLOCK. “Open the airlock.”

The captain wasn’t in his blade-ship. No one was piloting. “ _Mikasa_!” Armin yelled just as the floor jerked beneath them because a titan was filling all the screens and had grabbed onto the ship, blonde hair like bleached tendrils, hands a metre thick and calloused. 

They stopped into the first door of the airlock. Mikasa nodded at him. _Ready_ , she seemed to say. “Airlock, depressurise.” The door shut behind them and Eren felt an immediate tightness to his skin as the the outer door flew open — and led them into space. Mikasa disappeared out into the blackness, firing the grappling hook and vanishing above the ship, and Eren tried to follow her, stepping out into the nothing. The grappling hook had two levers, the first which he tried shot the hook. Ahead of him, Mikasa had already engaged, physically clinging to the titan — she was fighting a titan! — and sinking a blade into its flesh like a claw, edging closer and closer to its shoulder and neck as it tried to throw her off. Her free blade diced the other hand whenever it came near, its fingers drifting out into space.

For a moment his breath caught and his blood seemed to be on fire. It was incredible. His heart swelled.

His grappling hook clanged off the surface of the ship whenever he tried; Mikasa was fighting alone! He had to get there sooner, so, cursing his incompetence, he pointed the grappling hook at the titan and shot — and it buried itself into the titan’s head, sinking into the skin there. Eren found himself launched forwards, and the titan turned instinctively towards its newly approaching threat, swinging Eren around. He braced for impact.

Blood suddenly gushed all across his body and splattered across his helmet, steaming hot but not his — was titan blood always just hot? Or was he just cold? The back of the beast’s neck had opened faster than his eye could follow, and an arm smashed into Eren’s waist, snatching him out of place and ripping the hook out of the titan’s head. He turned to see that the captain had grabbed him right out of his moving ship, hauling Eren in and dumping him on the floor where two other unconscious bodies lay. It was a tight fit, the captain sinking back into his seat as the cockpit closed — the blade-ship was clearly made for a single person only, monitors and controls surrounding the captain on all sides and blinking with feeds. The titan’s blood was still evaporating off Eren, filling the ship with its stink. 

“Sorry,” Eren said, suddenly very light-headed, and he passed out. 

*

“I can’t believe they rushed out like that,” someone grunted nearby him. 

“They’re witless,” the captain’s voice said, very close by. Eren opened his eyes to see the interior of the ship, upside-down, and another unconscious body swaying next to him that he didn’t recognise. He was being carried over the shoulder of the captain. Someone had changed his bloodied shirt and removed all of the weaponry they’d taken. 

He could see Armin and Mikasa sitting stonily right where they’d began: tied up, and on the floor. The ground came rushing up to his face as Eren was heaped unceremoniously beside them. 

“It amazes me,” the captain said, after handing the other unconscious man to a member of his crew with an order to take them to their quarters, “that it hadn’t occurred to you that we wear specialised skin-suits to withstand the pressure of space.” He seemed taller than he was as he stood over them.

“There’s only one atmospheric pressure difference between space and human-standard pressure, sir,” Armin rattled out suddenly, his eyes locked onto the floor as if not daring to look up to believe what he was saying. Eren resisted the urge to smile. Armin showed bravery at the strangest of times. “That would be an a hundred and one kilopascal difference, _sir_ , perfectly retainable by the human body for hours at a time. It’s the cold that humans are most vulnerable to.”

“Great. A smart-mouth.” 

“Is he the one who told you about the warp drive?” An unfamiliar man appeared at the helm, an air of grimness around him. There was blood at his temple, matting his golden hair, but his uniform was laden with badges and stars. Eren felt Armin stiffen next to him in nervousness. 

Eren spoke for him, “We come from X2229. Because it’s almost a pirate port, we hear lots of rumours around the place. That one was one of the more interesting ones.”

“What made you believe it?”

The three of them exchanged a look. They’d grown ears for rumours and eaves-dropping because it was the only way to get information when out on X2229 where there were no direct communication relays to offical channels. 

“Call it intuition,” Eren said. The man looked pensive. 

“I’m interested. What other information is circulating out there? How much do you know of titans?”

Armin seemed to have found his voice, slipping into his ‘informative’ tone. It was one he used when faced with authority or teaching, or both. “Their origins are unknown. They seem to be uncoordinated, though their only weakness is the back of their neck, after which they vaporise entirely so we can’t research them. Their main goal so far has been destroying humanity, so they steal our technology to achieve it, and, with the warp drive becoming more commercially available among our ships, some of them have taken it.” He took a deep breath, and then continued: “We can also presume that they have some degree of intelligence, taking what must have been other ships’ cargo — explosive material — as weapons. This is unprecedented, even considering the warp drive stealing, and we can assume either new breeds of titans are evolving or that there’s been some other fundamental shift.”

“I see,” the man replied. The captain had already stopped listening and was scrolling through reports for damages to his ship. “While I have to congratulate you on a very keen eye, you’re slightly misinformed.”

Armin paused, his eyes flickering up to fix on the blonde man.

“The titans aren’t getting more intelligent. They didn’t use any bombs. Those were our ships, designed to self-destruct when the user decides it,” the man said. 

Self-destruct… was this what the military life was like? Eren could see it. With titans stealing technology, in last-ditch hopes, soldiers must have tried to fight to the very end to keep themselves and their weapons falling into huge, groping, hands.

The man turned to the captain, “Levi, these are some very promising recruits you’ve found. How did they even get their hands on your 3DMGs?”

What was a 3DMG?

“I didn’t find them. They crawled their own sorry asses here. And the girl’s an Ackerman, that’s how.”

The man smiled. Eren decided he didn’t like his smile because it didn’t seem to reach his eyes. “I can see the resemblance.”

Mikasa scowled. So did the captain. Wait— They were related? Eren’s head darted back and forth between them, noting the dark hair and the dark eyes — and possibly the dark attitude —, distantly stunned. That was why the captain had taken them… not because they had insisted, or because they wanted to join the military, or because they had tried to save his ship, but because Mikasa was an Ackerman! That must’ve also been why the ship responded to her and how the captain knew. It was a family heirloom. Then why had he tied her up and still treated her so coldly? 

“Levi will drop you off at Trost as we pass by,” the man told them. “It was nice seeing the fierce spirit of our trainees.”

“Thank you,” Eren said, absently, not really meaning it, still wondering about the captain and his way of thought. 

The man smiled again, but it looked a little more genuine this time, then disappeared out the corridor, probably to return to his own ship. Armin was staring after him with a grim sort of determination Eren rarely saw. The last time Armin looked like that, they’d just witnessed a woman murdered in an alleyway — and Mikasa had blankly said that there was nothing they could do about it. 

A month later, while on a grocery run, Eren had found the mangled body of the murderer. He’d asked Armin if he had killed him, and Armin had said no. He’d only told the family of the woman what had happened. 

“Engaging jump in t minus twenty. Make sure Eld is comfortable.”

They were jerked forwards into space once again, Eren gritting his teeth against the force of it, blackness closing in around the edges of his vision, and when his sight had cleared, they were in public airspace. There were ships of all kinds passing nearby — small, private vessels and enormous cargo liners sailing like white walls, fighters swooping past and a warship cruising in the distance. From here, space didn’t seem empty nor dead at all. It was alive and teeming like a well-oiled machine.

In front of them laid a planet rife with activity, impossibly larger than X2229, coated in swirling grey clouds hinting redness beneath, shifting as if the whole thing were alive. In its orbit were several darker moons, covered in infrastructure that stretched out into its atmosphere. They were natural satellites turned man-made.

“This is the SOS,” the captain said into the comms. “Requesting landing in Trost.”

“Request accepted,” came the robotic reply almost instantly. Eren had the dawning suspicion that the captain had much higher authority that he’d previously expected as the ship began to descend towards the planet.

“Levi!” The voice changed to a human’s. “Long time no see. What brings you home, to my city?”

“I’ve got some human cargo and reports to make. And reports can be made anywhere, even in Trost.” Mikasa tossed her head slightly at being referred to as ‘human cargo’. 

“Well, well. Business as ever. Can I treat you to any drinks, Corporal?”

“Maybe later, Pyxies.”

“Smith agreed. Surely that’s incentive enough for you?”

“I don’t think so. He just returned with me, and we’ve brought more pressing matters with us.”

“Oh? And what would those be?”

The captain, Levi, said nothing, focusing on bringing his ship down, closer and closer to the planet’s atmosphere — thick enough that it glowed red and lent every screen an ethereal tint. “That bastard lost the entire shipment.”

“I see,” the voice said, after a thoughtful pause. “So you’ll be needing to talk to me anyway. That’s very interesting, but you can’t linger in Trost for long. We’ve got another case on our hands.”

“Give it to someone else.”

“We have a lead on—“

“ _Pyxies_. I have ears in the room with me.”

“…Your human cargo? Why didn’t you put them in the cargo bay?”

“They’d get out.”

For a long moment the screens were nothing but vivid red glows, until they emerged through they cloud layer and the world seemed to burst into detail below them, flowering in huge expanses of yellows and reds and oranges, highways unfurling outwards further and further, dipping and diving like rivers to kneel at huge spires standing against the sky in the colours of a perpetually setting sun. It took Eren’s breath away.

“How about your crew?” the voice asked, after a considerable pause.

“They’re not in a state of mind to be watching over a bunch of feisty kids.”

It seemed less like they were lowering than cities were growing around them, rising tall like the heads of spears of an army, casting shadows that reached for the sun. Movement fluttered to life, vehicles and waving flags and neon signs, windows opening like the blinking and shutting of a thousand lights, a port gleaming and spreading its doors open to admit them.

“…So I take that things didn’t go as well as planned.”

Levi’s lips pursed, as though he was choosing his words carefully, or replaying everything that had happened. “We suffered losses, but it hasn’t been for nothing. Stop getting ahead of yourself, Pyxies. I’ll find you when I land.”

“I knew I could get you to drink with me.”

“Fuck yourself.” The line cut off. 

They touched down gently. The port was alive with people; Eren had never seen so many in his life! He’d never seen such building, or colour — X2229 had always been awash in artificial lights and blue —, or strange dress or so many airships. He was almost too stunned to move, even when the captain removed their bindings. For a moment he looked up at Levi, wondering how someone could go from place to place and never seem awed, but Levi wasn’t looking back, and instead his deep-eyed stare seemed to be seeing something else as he cut Eren loose. 

Finally, the captain stepped back, crossing his arms as he regarded them. “Someone will take you from the port. I’ve sent a message to warn them. So go.” It seemed strangely anti-climactic after everything, but Eren supposed that it was because they meant nothing to the captain in the grand scheme of things. 

Mikasa stood slowly. “Don’t you want something from me?” she asked, meeting his flat stare, Ackerman to Ackerman.

“Not until you prove yourself.”

She seemed to approve of that in a strange sort of way, as though she would’ve been suspicious if he’d accepted her capabilities so soon, and nodded as she left. Armin was quick on her tail, turning back to salute the captain, a hand to his forehead almost bashfully.

Levi didn’t return it. “Watch it! That’s a pirate’s salute!” he barked, but Armin had already darted out of the helm, though Levi was still looking where they’d left, like he could see something in the shadows of them. Maybe they reminded him of other trainees in the past or people in his crew that he’d lost.

Eren was left sitting on the floor. People in this crew had _died_ on the mission — that fact had been washed out in his shock at things. People had died, and they… were just going to leave. He was looking for words, but just couldn’t seem to find them. There didn’t seem to be anything appropriate. He stood, unfocused, looking at the ground, slowly making his way to the exit of the helm. 

“You,” the captain said suddenly, stopping him in his tracks, “you want to be a soldier, don’t you? You want to fight titans more than anything in this world.”

“Yeah,” Eren said. “I do.”

“And you were the one who dragged them into this, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t drag them into anything.” He met the captain’s gray eyes — were eyes those colour even possible? They seemed to be endlessly storming. “I just showed them my dream.”

“Your dream? A universe with no titans?” the captain challenged. “Do you know how many people dream of that? What makes yours more vivid than theirs?”

“I—“

The captain cut in, “She was more talented than you out there with the 3DMG and the blades, and she’s not nearly the only one. You’re weak right now, do you understand that?”

His words hit home. Eren— he _had_ been weak. He’d just sat by while that man, Oluo, had been blasted to pieces. He hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Even when he’d ventured out into space, all that had happened was that he’d passed out from the pressure and had to be rescued. 

In fact, all his life, before meeting the captain, he’d only seen one titan. He’d never really fought one before.

“But that doesn’t mean you have to stay weak, so go do something about it!”

Now, he’d been given the chance to fight.

His head snapped up, and his eyes blazed with steel. “Yes, sir!” he said, feeling the conviction of his words flood through him, and saluted a pirate’s salute because it was the only one he knew. Then — without waiting to see the captain’s reaction — he ducked out of the helm and ran down the flight deck until he reached the ramp.

Mikasa and Armin were waiting for him outside, leaning against the side of the ship. There was another man there, the person taking them to the military to begin their lives as recruits. “What took you so long?” Armin asked as he exited. 

“The captain—“ Eren started, and then hesitated. He wanted to keep the interaction to himself. They burned in him like a coal, like an engine that powered him on. “He told me to train hard.”

“He’ll eat his words,” Mikasa said, and the enormous, foreign, city invited them in. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not a drill. RIP Oluo. 
> 
> By the way, X2229 is unicode for this symbol: ∩.
> 
> Edit: Now with Levi! There are a lot of mistakes with this picture (and the one I have ready for next chapter, too). I forgot the survey/space corps logo. Also, they're not in space. Etc. Etc. 
> 
>  


	3. Candles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Upload so soon! Have something to chew over because the next one's going to be a while because I can't write. Need buffer. Must study for exam. Tomorrow. _Choked noise_.

 “This is the 104th squad! Salute your new recruits! Show them _how_ to salute!”

“Sir!” Hundreds of feet hit the ground. Right fists were made above hearts. 

“Armin Arlet! Mikasa Ackerman! Eren Yaeger!” They each saluted in return as their names were called, curling their fists in front of their chests. It was a foreign movement, but one that Eren could see himself accepting. The salute represented showing your heart. “You will be fighting for this city! You will be fighting for this country! You will be fighting for his solar system and this galaxy! Do _not_ let us down!”

“Yes, sir!” they chanted in unison.

“Now give me ten laps!”

“Yes, sir!” 

The words rung in Eren’s ears even when they retreated to the barracks at the end of the day, when night had fallen. The moons were high in the sky already in an unfamiliar visage, their shapes sharp behind the clouds, glinting as they caught the light of the suns. He felt heady with conviction, spurred on by the spirit of other recruits around him. Everybody was determined to fight. They’d barely caught a break in the short time they’d arrived, coming in during the evening to get caught up in all the night drills. 

They were on the outskirts of the city in a huge training camp bordered by fences while the city cast a shadow behind them, shuttering with lights and movement even in the dark. 

They were so far from home, but Eren could feel only excitement. He turned to look at Mikasa and Armin who were setting up their own beds, where even though he knew they had to be considered poor-quality, having a _mattress_ alone was a luxury. Eren was sleeping below Armin in their bunks, and Mikasa was in the next one over, sharing with a girl called Krista. It stunned Eren, too, that girls and boys slept in the same barracks, but he assumed that any fooling around would be discovered quickly and punished. 

Other recruits were a clatter of movement and talk as they changed out of their uniforms into sleeping-wear they’d left folded at the foot of their beds. As Eren prepared to climb into his, he grinned up at Armin. “Hey, Armin… how are you feeling?”

Perfectly timed, Armin yawned. “I’m tired. Don’t think your enthusiasm is infectious or anything, Eren.”

“But isn’t it great?” He beamed as he fluffed out his pillow. “We’re finally in the military! We’re surrounded with people just like us who want to fight!” In his mind’s eye he saw Petra again, flying out like a torpedo and beheading a titan in the blink of an eye. “We’ll fight, and we’ll never stop fighting until the last one is dead!”

“Hey, you! The one with the big mouth!” someone called on the other side of his bed. “How stupid are you? What makes you think everyone here is like you? We’re not here to be blind,” he said, splaying his hands on Eren’s mattress as he leaned forwards. On impulse Eren swept them off and glared, and the guy stepped back with a sneer, his eyes flickering to a point Eren’s shoulder before he turned away, huffily ignoring them. 

Eren looked back. Mikasa’s glare was like a weapon in and of itself. She’d proven incredible already today when there had been a short exercise on throwing blade accuracy and strength, so the other recruits must have been wary of her. 

She sat down nonchalantly on Eren’s bed, then Armin’s face peeked over the top and he climbed down, as well, and they formed a conspiratorial triangle on top of his covers. 

“Why does everybody keep touching my bed?” Eren asked, very seriously. 

“It’s the closest,” Mikasa said, at the same time Armin said, “It’s not polite to intrude on a girl’s space.”

Then Armin continued, “You know, Eren, not everything here is the way you think it is. Like that guy just then, he’s not here to fight for… freedom, or anything like that. And I think a lot of people here might feel the same.”

“What? Then we’ll make up for them.”

Armin’s eyebrows knitted together. “Okay, whatever. It’s not that important. What is important is… do you remember that man on the ship? The blonde one who talked to us?”

“Commander Erwin,” Mikasa said.

“Who?”

“I heard them talking. He’s the commander of the Space Corps.”

There was a moment of breathlessness as Eren’s mind worked to digest that fact. The commander! The commander himself had talked to them! Armin, too, was frowning at Eren’s foot.

“He lied to us,” Armin said, finally. “The titan was the one who had the bomb. I saw it blow up. And think about it… why would such a highly trained soldier self-destruct at a time where it hurt her own teammates more than the enemy?”

Eren— suddenly felt stupid for ever believing in Commander Erwin, as well as getting excited over his rank. “So did the military already know about the intelligence of the titans?”

Armin shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe they even had a hand in it.”

Suddenly, Mikasa said, “I think the kingdom will fall.”

Her words carried a premonition of disaster that sent a chill down Eren’s spine.

“Do you mean the warp drive?” Armin asked, to which Mikasa nodded. 

“No one knows warping here could lead titans to the planet. Even if we kill the titans, one escaping means the location of the kingdom is revealed.”

“So why don’t they tell the people?”

“They’ll panic,” Armin said. 

“But how many people,”—Eren felt indignance building up in him, and his voice became a heated whisper—“do you think died like Oluo did, just because they didn’t know titans could follow?”

“Heaps.” Armin was staring very intently at the bed covers. “That doesn’t mean they can tell everyone titans are stealing and using warp drives, though.”

“Why not? Then maybe people will be more cautious!” 

“Out of fear they’ll stop using warp drives and take them out entirely! Do you know what that means? The other solar systems will lose military troops, trade routes will get stopped… that’s a bigger disaster!” 

“They can’t _all_ stop. There’ll still be people who use it.”

“No, no, everyone will, because the people who _aren’t_ scared will get persecuted by who _are_. They’ll get blamed, Eren!” Armin put on an imitative tone: “We saw a titan the other day, that was your fault, wasn’t it? You’re just greedy, trying to get money while we’re looking out for the safety of our planet, still using your warp drive,” and switched back, just as heatedly. “It’ll be chaos! We might not have ever been here or lived here, but you can’t tell me that you don’t know how people are— do you think that anyone here in this giant planet _really_ trusts someone else with the warp drive if they find out it could lead titans here?”

The worst part of it was that Eren could see his argument, logically and clearly. And he knew — Commander Erwin must have seen it too. “So they’re going to keep quiet. Everyone’s going to say nothing and let this happen.”

“The higher ups must all know by now. It won’t be a secret in the military, but it will be to the public… We don’t even know how the king feels about it.”

“I get it,” Eren said. He flopped back, defeated. “I get it. I just— How stupid is that? Why should people’s lives and deaths have to get caught up in things like this?”

“I don’t know. I hate it too.” The bed bounced as Armin slumped next to him. “But to be strong, and to save more lives, you _have_ to look at the big picture.” He rolled over, until they were bumping shoulders. “I wonder how the commander can do it… Can you imagine having to make decisions like that every day?”

“Whether you hate it or not doesn’t matter.” Mikasa looked out over at the barracks, and they followed her gaze, over recruits who had no idea what gears had started turning in this war, what celestial plans had been put into motion. There was a ticking time bomb. Titans and their growing minds. 

The door at the front of the barracks had opened. 

“So I guess we have to go do something about it…” Eren echoed Levi’s words.

“Lights out!” Shadis called from the doorway. “I don’t expect to hear another peep from all of you!“

The door boomed shut, and they were left in the darkness.

*

Eren trained harder than ever. Mikasa was a deadly shadow at his side, quickly hailed as the top student in their cohort, and Armin was diligent in his keen eye. The day after they’d had their sobering talk, Armin had mouthed out, ‘I think you’re bugged’ to Eren, and so Eren took a long, thorough, shower. He didn’t find any electronics, but he doubted he would’ve seen it anyway.

The 3DMG was soon introduced to them, as well as the anti-gravitational training room. Mikasa took to the 3DMG like it was an extension of her, and Eren cut all his break-times, lunches, and dinners short so that he could return to the room to train. He kept thinking about being out there, in space, and failing to take down that titan — and he kept thinking about Levi’s words and intense gaze. You’re weak. Do something about it. The next titan he met, he vowed to take down; and the next time he met Levi, he vowed to to be stronger.

And, as it turned out, they didn’t bother making friends within the Training Corps. There was no time for that type of leisure. Whenever someone insulted them and Eren was a second away from picking a fight, Mikasa’s steady hand reminded him there were more important things at stake. Sometimes people tried to make small-talk during sparring, but Eren just kept his head down and focused, and they didn’t intrude into other people’s fights, no matter how much Eren wanted to. They were the trio on the outside — come in from a faraway foreign planet and grudgingly silent. Every training session they committed themselves to knowing that the clock was ticking down: the great, invisible, clock. 

They hadn’t heard any news about the titans’ growing intelligence, nor their ability to steal and use warp drives, and at the moment they were too weak to do anything about it. They had no access to the commander, nor, as they had come to learn, ‘Humanity’s Strongest’, Corporal Levi. In fact, as recruits, they didn’t even have access to the city, limited to spending their days and nights in the training camps. 

Most days, they didn’t, at least. Today there was some sort of festival and Shadis had permitted — ordered, more like — them to visit the city when night shrouded over. As the sun was setting and they were bone-weary with fatigue, they all piled onto the rigid back of some enormous creature, huge and flat, but with four stout and scaled legs and a fearsome-looking head. Keith Shadis sat on its neck and seemed to direct its steady trot up towards the city. 

Other recruits were chattering amongst themselves, apparently familiar with the festival already, but seeming subdued after their day of intensive training. The three of them didn’t care enough to ask what the occasion would be all about. They dangled their legs off the side of their beast of burden, watching the dusty ground pass by. 

A shooting star glimmered in the sky, over the darkening reddish plains. Eren didn’t make a wish. It seemed like a waste to wish on something that was just a occurrence by chance. 

The city arrived all too suddenly, its tall spires surrounding them like metal trees. The beast stopped and knelt to let them down, and Shadis yelled something about being back by the time the lights were gone, and then recruits trickled off and out into different directions deeper into the city, where all the roads seemed to be bridges that laced around each other, some leading into buildings, others leading further in. Eren let his feet take him with its whims, and they wandered aimlessly for a while, looking up at the steel towers, looking down at the labyrinth of roads — and through it all he could see a river flowing beneath, disturbed by the reflections of moving people. Something in the water caught his eye: a light, serenely drifting through the current. He thought it was a flame walking along the surface at first, but a closer squint revealed that it was a candle in a paper boat.

Was this a regular occurrence? They continued meandering, catching snippets of talk from the people. Their wages, their children, the cold, their plans, their fashion — no one seemed to be talking about a festival, no one seemed to glance at them for their recruit uniforms, and no one was talking about the titans that could come tearing in at any minute. 

“Eren.” Mikasa nudged him. “The commander and corporal.” She pointed at a lower road, where two characteristic cloaked figures were taking long strides to a nearby building. 

Mikasa took the reins on tailing, glancing around at every junction as though calculating in her mind the likelihood the Space Corps members had taken a certain route. They passed through countless foyers of the enormous buildings — filled with lifts and lights, and signs that read ‘closed’ and people leisurely talking — until they came across a clearing where there was only one road, arching like a star just above the river, low enough to dip fingers into the water. Meaningless talk seemed to have fallen into the depths of the current and vanished. The people were muted, placing boats with candles into the waterway, watching them balance there on the current like delicate spinning-tops. 

Commander Erwin and Corporal Levi were watching the fleet of lights flow. Levi had lowered his hood, firelight dancing across strands of his hair and the lines of his face. Like a statue beside him, Erwin stood straight-backed, his solemnity a weight of the responsibilities he carried. Eren had endless admiration for the two, but there was a hint of resentment there, too, for their deception and haughtiness — for making Eren powerless by withholding information and then being impossible to access.

Through the crowd, he stopped beside Levi. Armin looked hesitant about approaching Erwin, and Mikasa merely stood behind them both and watched idly. 

“So… what are these all for?” Eren gestured at the boats floating by. Levi didn’t seem surprised that Eren had arrived. He’d probably actually been expecting them. 

Levi didn’t take his eyes off the water. “Uncultured pig.” His voice was hauntingly familiar after weeks without it, low like the thrum of ambience surrounding them.

“You can’t exactly blame me,” Eren said, feeling a bit offended at being called a pig. “Of course I don’t know what they are.”

“They’re wishes, if you want them to be. The wishes of an entire population.”

“And if I don’t want them to be?”

Levi, his gaze darker than the waters, looked away in exasperation as though he couldn’t stand Eren’s stupidity. “Then they’re just shitty paper boats with candles. So what?”

“Oh,” he said. Then, “Did you put one in?”

“For my comrades who have died, yes. It’s a form of paying respects. Are you done nosing?”

For a moment Eren felt bad, but then not really. Levi was the one who had referred to them as ‘shitty’. “…Do you have a spare?”

“Make one yourself,” Levi said, drawing out a square paper from an inner pocket. Eren took it and looked at it blankly, experimentally bending a corner. How was he expected to make a boat out of a square? “Never mind.” It was plucked out of his hands and after a few deft movements, dropped back into his hold as a slightly lopsided boat. “I don’t have another candle, so this will have to do.”

The tip of a lighter was brought to the top of the boat, the paper slowly blackening with the heat, setting it alight. Eren knelt. A mottled version of himself stared back from in the river, and above, Levi was looking the other way. Maybe he felt intrusive. People were passing behind them, there was a glimpse of Mikasa’s red scarf, and then she was beside him too. 

And, thinking of his mother, he set it into the water. Mikasa touched his knee, a silent acknowledgement that she was remembering the same woman as he was, and they remained sitting as they watched it burn on the river surface, brighter than all the rest, flames consuming it wholly until it faded away into ash and scattered along the water with the wind.

“My mother was eaten by a titan,” Eren said out loud, and it felt strange on his tongue. Usually when he said it, it was to himself, in the depths of some night and filled with anger. He saw, in the reflection, Levi glance down at him.

“I don’t need your life story.”

“I just wanted to make sure you didn’t want to hear.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like life stories. They become death stories.”

As he stopped to let that sink in, somewhere in the background, he heard Armin say, “Your eyebrows are incredible, sir.”

There was a pause, then— “Thank you.” 

Armin met Eren’s startled look, _why had I said that?_ written all across his face. Eren offered him a weak smile before he turned back to the river. Armin was testing Erwin, in some roundabout way, even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it.

The boats looked like shooting stars. Maybe the next time one came along, he’d make a wish after all. 

He noticed a duality in everything surrounding him. Water and fire, the movement of a current and the stillness of death, the sombre air of Levi and the misplaced humour of Armin, and the gorgeous beauty of things that had no business being beautiful at all. The city was one of these: incredibly flawed in its people, but awing in its exterior. So was Levi, in an odd sort of way, though Eren had never thought of a man being ‘beautiful’ before. But Levi wasn’t _really_ beautiful, and he wasn’t meant to be… lots of people here were ‘beautiful’. Objectively, Mikasa was beautiful. Objectively, Erwin was striking. Objectively, Armin was cute.

Eren imagined, for a moment, that every person was a shape. Some of them seemed to be complex, but when he turned them over, they were two-dimensional and fell inwards. Some of them were the other way around. Some of them, like Levi, he was only just starting to see the other facets of, and they were shifting in colours and shapes that were so intriguing that he couldn’t help but want to see more. Eren didn’t have to be _close_ , like a person Levi trusted and relied on. He just wanted to see. He wanted to see Levi fighting. He wanted to see Levi in flight. He wanted to see him in his day-to-day life, writing reports, talking to superiors as well as inferiors, practising with his blades, taking care of his ship — because Eren just found him incredibly _interesting_. Levi had inspired him without a second thought that day on the ship; he had saved him in his fumbling attempts at attacking a titan; he had lifted him out of X2229 to a planet of his dreams; he had revealed a crude and blunt way of existing, yet at the same time distantly subtle and sentimental, profound enough to make Eren really _wonder_ how such a person could’ve existed. 

Maybe it was all only hero worship. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just his desire for another friend. But maybe it wasn’t any of that, because at that moment, getting close to Levi was only so important as it was getting more information about the titans and the state of the war. Whatever he felt, however interested he was in understanding Levi as a human, was secondary. 

“If your stomach gets any louder, Erwin’s going to have to start shouting to be heard over you.”

Eren blinked out of his reverie. A low growl seemed to be coming from… him. They hadn’t eaten dinner because Shadis had assumed that they’d find something to eat in the city. “We don’t have any money,” he said, looking down at his stomach like it was a mystery.

“That’s fine. We came prepared to pay for your meals.”

Eren said, “You know that we know about the warp drive and the titans and bombs, because you probably bugged me when I was unconscious, so is that why you were out here for us to find today? To talk about those? Is that why you’re treating us to dinner?”

“In part.” Levi turned, gathering his cloak around him, prompting Eren to do the same and follow. 

Erwin was explaining to Armin the legends surrounding the candle-boats, showing Armin what folds to make in the paper, even, but he looked towards them as Levi put his hood back up.

“This one’s hungry,” Levi said, by way of explanation. 

“Alright,” Erwin said, falling into step beside them, and then looked at Armin as he continued unravelling his tale. “… So when humans were born out of the ocean of stars, they lived in the constellations under their god…”

They made their ways through the murmuring crowd, Levi leading as though following some invisible thread. It reminded Eren that Levi was born and raised in some place completely different to his own — or maybe Levi’s memory was just incredible.

“They were immortal and they were happy. They lived endless lives on planets to their liking. Slowly, however, they began to fall out of love with their god and instead fell in love with their planets, the stars, and each other.”

Eren’s shoulder ran into someone. That long-faced boy. The one who’d yelled at him the first night, called Jean. He saw Jean’s mouth open to retaliate, but then all the blood flooded out of his face at the sight of the commander and corporal, who swept past.

Mikasa, walking behind them, flashed him a smug quirk of her mouth.

Neither the commander nor the corporal even noticed. “The god, hurt and angry, took away his gifts and tried to kill them to turn them back into stardust, but the humans escaped into another galaxy. This one.” He gestured to the river below them. “When we set sail to paper boats, we return our dead to the stars. The water represents space and the candles, stars; and we do it in the hopes that one day that our god will forgive us and bring them back to life when he tries to re-make his perfect people.”

“Do you think he would?” Armin asked.

“No.” Levi answered before Erwin could. “Whatever god or gods are out there, they won’t ever take us back.”

“But you put boats in,” Eren pointed out.

“A sign of respect, idiot. Didn’t you hear me the first time?”

“It’s merely tradition,” Erwin said. 

Eren flattened his lips in disbelief, but any further argument he was going to make was cut off when Levi ushered them towards a set of double doors in the side of a building that opened to a small white room. He gestured them in, and they stood there as the doors closed. The purpose of the featureless room was a complete mystery until the ground lurched and Eren jerked in alarm as it shot up. 

Though he’d seen the buildings, towering and immense, it’d never occurred to him exactly how people reached the higher floors. 

_Ding!_ the room sounded, as the floor slowed and the wall behind them opened. Eren turned— and was faced with a wide view of the city from above, a small aircraft zipping past the window that spanned the whole floor that they were presented with, a bustle of people in uniform carrying platters, golden lights, plush dark cushions that lined the seats, a hubbub of overarching talk in a controlled, professional atmosphere.

“Reservation?” Someone appeared at their side, hair tied up into a tight bun and politely smiling.

“Smith, for five.”

“Right this way.”

Maybe it was impolite to gawk, but Eren’s eyes flittered around the restaurant to soak it in. His memories of eating were confined to roadside stands where they had to shove through crowds and wave money in the chef’s face, shouting over the din, slapping their currency down and taking something and popping it in their mouth. 

And also younger days in a small room that was their home, a kitchen inevitably dirty with the dust that blew in the cracks of the house and the window with a broken latch— hissing oil, his mother recounting her day to him over the sound of the pan.

Or even in the training camps, where they were ladled the meal of the week. 

Armin, Eren and Mikasa sat together on one side of the table as though presenting a united front.

“We’ll get to the point, so you have the dinner to think it over,” Levi said, resting on his elbows, leaning forwards, looking like he didn’t want to be there. “I want to take you on as my protégé earlier than expected. We’re leaving tomorrow morning on an expedition.”

Eren wanted to say that that didn’t seem like a lot of time to make a decision, but he realised Levi was waiting for Mikasa’s answer, and that it had all probably been deliberate anyway. 

“I have conditions,” Mikasa said, after a moment. 

“We’ll let them tag along. But there are restrictions on that.” He raised a finger, ticking them off as he went. “Their lives are your responsibility. If they get in our way, we leave them behind. If resources become scarce, we leave them behind. If I see fit, we leave them behind. If they break or lose gear, it won’t be replaced. If they commit any crimes while on foreign planets, they will be held fully legally responsible. ”

“I’ll do it.”

“That was a quick answer,” Erwin commented, looking at his menu. 

“Eren wants to be up there and fight. That’s why I’ll do it.”

“Mikasa, you don’t have to…” At her blank look, he fell silent. This was an argument they’d continued for years, and it wasn’t the place to bring it up. “Why is she so important to you, anyway? What’s it about being an Ackerman?”

“That’s confidential,” Levi said, opening his own menu. 

“Don’t you think she deserves to know?”

Levi looked up, and his expression was a mixture of exasperation and something else. Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was disgust. “I think she already has some idea of what it is. Let’s say it’s because she’s the one of the only people aside from me that the ship will ever respond to.”

Why was there a ship specifically made for the Ackermans? There was so much history surrounding the kingdom that they were unaware of that Eren felt that, even if he could train to become much stronger, would always serve as a divide between them.

“We’ve already spoken to Keith Shadis,” Erwin added. “What belongings you three own have already been taken on board.”

They presented a perfectly undisturbed, premeditated front, idly browsing for their dinners.

Eren didn’t know what it was, but he had some sense that giant jaws had just closed around them, as wide and unstoppable as the cosmos, and had sealed their fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hasty sketch of Levi and firelight: Where the hell is his hood? I forgot about it. Doh.  
>   
> I see all of you cutely connected across Tumblr and— I _want_ to be there in that capacity, but the rest of the site doesn't suit me. I don't have the time to get lost down deep rabbit-holes every day, and I'm not a hardcore fan like that; and all I'd share are shitposts of academics, my life and friends, and cats. Look at my pseud picture. I don't even own a cat. That's the real tragedy.
> 
> Do you know what would be interesting to see? A Discord server. But I doubt Discord reaches this demographic well, considering it's aimed at gamers.


	4. Love and Sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter briefly references the effects of travelling close to the speed of light. If you're not familiar: someone travelling at very high speeds will start experiencing time dilation — time runs slower for them than for an observer. If I went from point A to B to A at close to the speed of light, perhaps a few minutes for me would pass, but the people waiting for me at A would have waited the distance ÷ my speed. Aka. the full allocated time.
> 
> There's a pretty neat thought experiment on this, of a light clock, where you have a mirror on the ceiling and floor of a space ship, and you have light reflecting between them. To someone in the ship, that light is travelling the distance between the mirrors in a certain span of time. To someone outside the ship, the light is travelling _more_ than that distance between the mirrors, because the ship has a horizontal displacement, relative to them, as well.
> 
> But it takes the same span of time for the light to bounce between the mirrors. How could that be?! Given light's incredible property of having a fixed speed, and that speed is dependent on distance and time, _time_ must be the factor that changes. Therefore: time has the ability to be relative. Time would be 'shorter' for the person on the ship. 
> 
> Isn't physics great?! I'm so sorry. Take this chapter in penance. If you're interested, there are plenty of far better explanations out there. You don't really have to understand this, btw, just know that it happens.

Stepping back on board the ship was surreal after weeks away from it. Eren had never thought he’d be returning. As he made his way through the corridor, he saw through a few open doors the familiar faces of Petra, Gunther, and Eld, as well as members of Erwin’s crew he didn’t recognise. Petra waved.

Mikasa was right behind him, quietly in thought. He’d asked her last night what Levi had meant when he’d said that she had some idea of why she was necessary, and she said that it might have been her devotion. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he could see it, hazily. Mikasa had this cold intensity to everything she did, already excelling far beyond the rest during their time in the training camp — and it far surpassed the skills Eren had. Out of Armin and Mikasa, really, Eren was the most useless one. Armin’s intelligence was needed when it came to people like Erwin, who Eren knew had fore-thought every step; while Mikasa was the one who had attracted the attention of the Corporal himself. 

He told himself that he’d change that.

The ship rumbled to life beneath him as he was settling into the place where he’d be spending his time for the next indeterminable while. Mikasa was sleeping in the same quarters, and Armin was alone in the room next door. There was a small closet where he kept his clothes — most of it was the regulation uniform he’d been given in the camp — but he was pleased to see that there had been some civilian clothes hung inside as well. A moment after, he realised he should’ve expected it. Of course Erwin had planned ahead.

They could hear the quiet murmur of the other crew members through the walls. Eren guessed it was also to build trust between them, if they could hear each other most times. 

Then their door slid open. Armin stood outside, looking slightly surprised, his hand raised to knock. “How… do these doors work?”

Eren and Armin spent their time pouring over an unlabelled panel with buttons that was in the wall beside the door. One of the buttons turned on and off the lights, which seemed to be imbedded where the wall met the ceiling. Another one locked the door. Another opened an extremely compact bathroom. Another one didn’t seem to do anything at all, and the last—— the opposite wall became transparent. Mikasa, who was doing crunches on the floor, turned to look, making a noise of acknowledgement before returning to her task. They were still ascending through the cloud layer, so its view was only of pinkish mist, but Eren felt excited all the same, knowing that he’d be able to watch the ship’s journey through space instead of being stuck in a sightless metal room.

“It’s weird to think we ended up here,” Armin mused, looking out to the rushing clouds of the planet they were leaving. 

“There are weirder things to come,” Eren said, planting a hand in Armin’s hair and ruffling to a protesting _hey!_ “Want to go explore the ship? Mikasa?”

She was halfway through her routine. “I’ll look later.” She would, and she’d probably drag Eren into coming with her anyway.

They found the cargo holds that had layers of security and walls so thick that Eren suspected they were made to contain titans; blade-ship bays that were build into the walls; engineering with huge engines for warp drives; the medical bay, where they were greeted almost frighteningly enthusiastically by a woman in glasses so they hurried out; a kitchen and small lounge and recreational room; and of course, the helm, beside the airlock, where the commander and captain were discussing flight plans. 

Eren noticed that in most places, the doors weren’t closed. In fact, as they passed by one of the quarters, they were called out to by a familiar voice. “Hey! Eren, is it?” Petra was sitting cross-legged on the floor, while Gunther and Eld seemed to be locked in a fierce game of chess. “Want to play?”

“We don’t know how to,” Eren said. Then, “Um… Is it really okay if we come in?”

“Yeah, of course. Shove over, Eld.”

The interior of the room wasn’t as personalised as he’d thought it would’ve been. Most of it was as sparse as his, though there was a picture frame cropped up in the corner of the bed, but he couldn’t see what it was and it would’ve been rude to look. It seemed like this was where both Gunther and Eld stayed.

“That’s the king,” Petra explained, pointing, after they’d sat down beside her. It had a strange design, with a cross at the top that reminded Eren of a grave. “You have to protect him, otherwise it’s game over.”

“Shouldn’t you be…”—he scanned over the playing field, where it resembled an army,—“trying to keep as many pieces alive as possible?”

“No,” she said, just as Eld moved a horse-like one forwards and onto the space of a round-headed one, knocking off the board. She seemed a little sombre, but disguised it with a sunny smile. “In most games, really, it’s inevitable that you lose some pieces.”

*

They left after playing a few matches — Eren lost all of his, and while Armin had lost the first few, he’d gradually began to pull tricks over the crew. At one point the ship had shifted into warp drive and all the pieces had flown across the room, and they’d had to crawl under the beds to retrieve them, before returning to their game that they’d somehow memorised the arrangement of. Before they’d left and bid goodnight, they’d earned grudging nods and a wave.

The door shut behind them. Armin was beaming with a sort of intellectual energy, and just as he’d opened his mouth to say something, he shut it again, staring over Eren’s shoulder because Erwin was making his way down the corridor from the helm, his posture and instructing air still immaculate, but somehow seeming more ragged around the eyes. 

“Ah,” he said. “Hello, our new crew.”

Armin bowed. Eren saluted. “Good evening, Commander.”

“If it can even constitute as evening,” he said, smiling lightly. His expression sobered slightly. “We’ll be arriving soon at U0026. It’s a planet we visit quite frequently, but because you aren’t faces associated with the Space Corps, we’ll be needing you to run a few tasks.” 

“That’s more than fine, sir,” Eren replied. 

Erwin seemed to be scrutinising him closely. “It won’t be a task you’re expecting. It doesn’t determine the fate of the world, but it’s quite important. Consider it a test.”

He would… blatantly tell them it would be a test? “Yes, sir.”

Erwin nodded, thoughts seeming elsewhere, then walked away towards his own quarters. 

“That man’s mind,” Armin said, with traces of awe, “is really incredible.”

Eren didn’t answer, because while he agreed, he really wished it didn’t have to be used against them. 

They returned to Mikasa and were surprised to find the room empty, but the shower could be heard running. “Do you think they’ll find it weird that you share a room?”

“It’s not weird. She’s like my sister.”

“I guess she’s captain Levi’s sister, or cousin, or… something.”

“That’s weirder.”

“Yeah,” Armin laughed softly. “It really is. Anyway, goodnight, Eren. Meeting new people is tiring.”

“Sleep well.”

“Yeah,” he heard, before the door shut. Eren pressed the button to lock the door, then sat down at the foot of his bed to wait for Mikasa to finish her shower, staring up at the wall. He wondered where they were headed, what they were expected to do, if the crew themselves even knew where they were headed… in this place it seemed like information was always a step out of sight.

He was always chasing after something. Whether it was the back of Mikasa, his dream, or this, now. In a reflection of Mikasa, earlier, he slid down and started a routine of crunches, counting in his head. 

She emerged sometime later and just said, “Goodnight,” before turning off the lights and climbing into her own bed, leaving Eren to his quiet workout and his panting breaths. ‘So do something about it’. He would. He swore he would. That included meeting people on this ship, understanding them, understanding Levi, the nature of titans — it included so much more that was too far away for him to reach. He was starting to realise that his usual approach of throwing himself in headfirst would need _more_. How was he supposed to compete with years and years of experience? He had to use his brain. He had to think hard, outsmart…

He exercised until he didn’t know up from down, stumbling into the small cylinder of a shower in the bathroom, and then went to sleep, strapping himself down with a belt that he realised he could pull from the wall to the side of the bed.

The next thing he knew, he was groggily staring up at the wall in the darkness. What had woken him was the open front door, however, where the silhouettes of the captain and commander stretched into the room and their conversation drifted in.

“—sleeping. We can wait for a while.”

“They have to be ready to get up at any time.”

His blankets shuffled as he unclipped the belt and sat up, and both heads turned to face him. “It’s okay,” he said, voice bleary. “I’m awake.” He sensed more than saw Levi’s frown. “Mikasa? Mikasa?”

There was a noise above him, and then her head appeared over the side, staring, in the darkness.

“We don’t need her for this,” Levi said. 

The taller silhouette vanished for a moment, and Eren heard him gently urging Armin awake as Eren got dressed under the watchful eye of the captain. All he did was tug on a jacket and stand — carefully, in the corner of the room where Levi couldn’t see — to change into proper trousers. 

He squinted as he emerged into the light. Captain Levi had leaned against the wall, looking impatient. A few moments after, Erwin and Armin — looking sleep-bedraggled — emerged. “You shouldn’t sleep so deeply,” Levi chastised. 

They’d probably look like Levi if they didn’t sleep deeply.

Erwin ignored Levi’s comment, “I hope you rested well,” and instead, they all fell into stride towards the exit of the ship. “The man we’re looking for is the owner of a brothel. He has some more—” His gaze fell on Armin, whose hazel eyes were staring up at him, wide, “—unique tastes. If anything happens, take initiative; he’s an extensive purveyor in intel, though it’s known that he’s more receptive to younger men.”

“Don’t go too far,” Levi muttered, and if Eren didn’t know better he’d almost say that Levi didn’t look very pleased with what they were going to do. 

“We’re searching for the whereabouts of a certain planet reliably reported to have a large amassing of titans — it might even be the source of them.”

The… source of titans? No wonder both the commander and corporal had come.

“Unfortunately, to get there, there are no common warp paths through. We need to cross though territory owned by this man. He’s a very wealthy individual.” They disembarked off the ship, pulling up their hoods. Just before they did, Eren caught Armin’s stunned look.

When they’d been sleeping, the ship had landed and docked in at U0026. Immediately Eren felt the heat of the planet rolling over him in waves and the dryness of the air. In the background of the city they emerged into stood enormous mountains that Eren suspected were volcanos. From some smaller ones pillars of steam were rising into the air, though they all seemed to be quite far away, where even the pungency of sulphur couldn’t reach. 

“Don’t you have a lot of power as the Space Corps? Can’t you just use your authority to get through?”

“Private establishments will always oppose us. They don’t like ties to bureaucracy or the kingdom, in any form. It’s in their interests to keep out of the eye of the law.”

There seemed to be many travellers, given varying dress. Some were in garish and strange circular clothing, others in very little at all, or with odd jewellery imbedded in them. While the entire place seemed less technologically advanced than Trost city, it was still busy with myriads of shifting colours. 

They stopped into a large, ostentatious inn that undoubtedly doubled as a brothel from its suggestive signs, lowering their hoods as they entered. The scent of perfume was immediately recognisable, casting a haze over the wide open room, and twin staircases twisted up the walls to a landing where women were draped across the banister, dressed only in beads, chatting amongst themselves and glancing down at the travellers milling in the foyer. The brothel seemed to have good business. The foyer was quite active, men and women sitting on chairs attended to by barely-clothed girls.

There were several receptionists, and they waited patiently in line before one. Unlike the other women, the ones at the front desks were dressed modestly, blouses tightly buttoned up. 

“Good evening. Is Enlocke here?” Erwin asked, over the din, once they reached the front.

“He’s not taking visitors.”

“Would you send him a message? Erwin’s here to see him.”

“I said, he’s not taking visitors. But we’ll see if any of the girls are willing to put in a word for you.”

As if summoned, a door behind the receptionist’s area swung open and out peered a working girl. She was ridiculously beautiful, in the sort of dollish way Eren hardly ever saw, eyes bright enough that they seemed to shift through an array of green, gold, and blue. 

“What’s that?” she asked, and fittingly, her voice was like tinkling bells. “Did I hear that Erwin Smith needs a favour?” She slunk forwards, a thin shirt hanging off one shoulder. Other patrons waiting in line around them murmured, eyes rising, all turning towards this girl who undeniably stood out among the rest. “If you want to speak to Enlocke… I’m his favourite, remember. I could get you an audience in no time.”

“Hello, Betty.” Erwin’s eyes didn’t wander, and his light tone hid any intentions she might’ve been looking for. He must have met her before, though, and it didn’t surprise Eren. He _had_ said that the owner of the place was a popular man for intelligence, and if that Betty girl was the favourite of the brothel and Erwin was a high-ranking official, they must have ran across each other before.

“I’ll get you what you want. On one condition.” She tipped her head up, parting her lips, which she licked so they were wet and glistening. “Sleep with me.”

Eren made a startled noise in his throat, head whipping towards both Erwin and Levi to gauge their reactions, but Levi looked as disinterested as ever, and Erwin was unreadable. The receptionist, however, he saw roll her eyes.

“Alright,” Erwin said.

An access door was raised from the side of the counter, and when Eren stood still, not realising they were _all_ supposed to follow, Levi gave a shove to prompt him into moving. They were led through the door behind the desk into a dark corridor, where a few open doors led glimpses into normal working quarters, a few women writing letters and reports, eyes that briefly met his as he passed by. They’d left the heady hazy air of the brothel behind and delved, instead, into its underbelly, where things were hushed but stewing.

Eren lost track of the stairs they took, up, down, up, and down, down, — a maze of hallways —, realising that it really _was_ more than a place for sex trade. They entered into an open room with wooden floors, plush couches, a dark coffee table with magazines, a rug spread like sin, and another flight of stairs leading up. It was a waiting room, with a small adjoining office-room with desk and bed inside, separated only by curtain of beads.

“He’s right upstairs,” she said, approaching Erwin and placing a hand his chest like a pledge. “But first, why don’t we make good on what you promised me…?” He took her hand in quiet acquiescence.

She led him away behind the bead curtain, which rustled as they entered, but through it Eren could still see them clearly. He had a sudden moment of irrational panic. Was that— Was Erwin _actually_ going to–?

Levi had taken a seat on one of the couches, hooking an arm around the back of it and propping a leg up, picking up a magazine and turning it over. Hesitantly, Eren sat next to him. “Do we…”

“We just wait.”

“They’re— doing it right _here_?” It was like his brain ran into a block when it came to associating Commander Erwin with sex. The woman, Betty, was undoing the buttons of his shirt, and he’d raised a hand to stroke her hair, holding her there so that he could kiss the top of her head. Through the mottled curtain they looked like lovers.

“I’ve seen Erwin fucking people in worse circumstances,” Levi said. Next to Eren, Armin was staring at the ground very, very intently, his cheeks slowly burning full with red. “It’s not a big deal.”

“The _commander_ ,” Eren hissed lowly, glancing up to check the two didn’t hear. “The _commander_ of the _Space Corps_ is going to have sex with a woman right in room right next door, behind a really terrible excuse of a curtain.”

“And you’re sitting beside humanity’s strongest in the basement of a prostitution mogul. You’re lucky they didn’t demand any of _my_ services, as well.”

Eren’s brain short-circuited. “You’ve— you’ve done this before?” 

“You need to understand,” Levi said, putting up his other leg, “that these women here want to get out, and that they have a very different view on sex than you do. One of the easiest ways to have that to happen is to be impregnated — though Erwin’s not doing that —, or to find a lover through sex with enough influence and power to take them out of the planet entirely.”

“So you do this often, as well?” His mind unfolded with possibilities, imagining Levi in Erwin’s place, blood suddenly rushing to his cheeks.

“Neither of us do it _often_. Only if we need to. You’re either inexperienced or a virgin,”—a strangled wheeze, from Armin— “so you probably don’t understand that there can be very little meaning to sex when you aren’t looking for love.”

There was a noise in the other room, the protest of a mattress under the weight of two bodies as they collapsed onto it. Eren, like he was a freight train headed towards disaster, found himself looking up — and there he could see, in flashes and glimpses, Betty pinned under Erwin’s broad bare body, looking utterly breakable under his bulk and the span of his muscles and shoulders as he held her hips in his wide hands and manhandled her where he wanted.

Suddenly, irrationally, he imagined if that was Levi. Eren would have to leave. He didn’t think he composure would be able to hold. Even seeing Erwin like that made him think about— about—

“Does he… like her?” 

The springs began to squeal. Through the gaps in the swaying beads the muscles in Erwin’s back were shifting and flexing with every beat of his body as he fucked her deep and rolled his hips. His chest was pressed to the slick arc of her body, sweat gleaming as it beaded on his arms and she let out sounds like she would feel it for days, breathless airless _Erwin-erwin-erwin-please-please_ s and her arms clutching at his back.

“No.” Levi turned a page. “Pity, maybe, but Erwin tends to treat his lays well.” 

Eren finally looked away. He covered Armin’s eyes, just in case, and heard Levi snort. 

“What?” he asked defensively. “We’re not old and jaded like you.” As he glanced at Levi’s surprisingly youthful face, a realisation flickered across his mind, but it wasn’t the place to ask. Or was it? Anything to change the topic. “Captain,” he said, shut his mouth, and opened it again. “They say you’re in your thirties, but are you actually?”

“For some,” he said, and those storm-grey eyes flickered up to Eren. “You know what it is.”

“…Why did you have to travel at speeds close to light? That is what it is, right?” It was the only thing that came to his mind.

“My crew was injured. They wouldn’t have survived a warp or a month’s worth of travel.” His fingers tapped on the back of a page. “Less than an hour passed for us, but when we landed, it’d been years. That’s why I’m recognised as older than I biologically am. And I’ve done it several times.” 

“Does it bother you?”

“You get used to it. It’s not as though most people I know die of old age.”

“That’s…” terrible, he wanted to say, but it’d sound like a platitude.

“A fact.”

Eren tried to reach for a magazine as well, but realised he couldn’t when he was still preserving Armin’s innocence. Reluctantly, Eren withdrew his hand, but Armin didn’t look, though it seemed to be against a huge force of will. He was blushing up to the tip of his ears. 

Before he could even choose between _Planet Monthly!_ or _Galaxia Sports!_ , her cry rung out across the room, her whole body tensing like a bow-string, toes curling, and below it all, they heard, in a low growl, something like— “Come. Come around me. Right now.” At the words, Armin jerked forwards like he’d been electrocuted.

If he didn’t know better, Eren would’ve said Levi looked vaguely smug. It was like Eren was suddenly seeing the resemblance to Mikasa clearly.

He heard Erwin give this wordless exhale, saw him tip his head back, and then Eren tore his eyes away because he’d looked up again and he really didn’t want to stare when his commander was in the throes of orgasm. 

“What magazine are you reading?” he asked desperately.

“Who knows?” Levi said. 

“Have you ever _had sex with-the-commander_ ,” Armin blurted out, and why did he have to bring it back to Erwin and sex? Eren wanted to cover his head with a pillow and pretend nothing was happening, but he could hear Erwin withdrawing, the bed creaking.

“Of course not. What an astoundingly stupid question.”

They let out twin sighs of relief. 

“If I did, he wouldn’t stop coming back for more. It would be terrible for our productivity.”

Eren choked on nothing, and began coughing while Armin patted his back, looking equally distressed. 

“But no. No one prefers to fraternise with crew. You get attached. Then they die.” Levi was looking straight into the room where Erwin was changing, as if directing his words there.

In front of them, the rustle of beads meant Erwin had emerged. His carefully parted hair was slightly out of place, he wasn’t wearing his jacket — it was draped over the sleeping body of Betty — and he was buttoning up his shirt. “Alright,” he said, like nothing had happened and they hadn’t heard him come. “Let’s go.”

They lagged a heartbeat behind Levi, who ascended the stairs without hesitation and rapped against the door there. Armin seemed unable to meet Erwin’s eyes.

Eren thought about what Levi said — sex without love — and suddenly felt a lot more sombre about the whole thing. To treat it just like a transaction seemed sad to him. They weren’t able to have lovers because they were never in one place for long, and they weren’t allowed to keep lovers with them because they would get killed. 

The room they stepped into was an organised mess, brimming with papers in folders and wires that led to multiple computers, shelves filled with books and discs, chutes leading into a pipe system that sprawled over the walls and a hole in the ceiling — everything cast into dark shifting light by an incinerator that crackled away behind a man who was sitting at an enormous wooden desk, chairs facing it.

“Enlocke,” Levi said, seating himself. “We’ve got business past sector 239. We want crossing authority.”

“And good evening to you too, Corporal.” There was a smile in the man’s words. “Permission to cross through my territory… What will you give me in return?”

Erwin said, “The Garrison will turn a blind eye to the shipments leaving U0029 for a month — a month on Rose.”

“Ah… Commander, I was joking. You’ve done enough for me already,” the man said, taking a long exhale filled with smoke. Eren caught a better glimpse of his face: deeply angled, surprisingly slender. A smile. “My Betty’s in love with you, you know. Collects papers whenever you feature.”

“A prostitute and the commander of the Space Corps,” Levi muttered. “How comical.”

“You can’t begrudge a dream, Corporal. That’s the problem with workers, and crew… You want them as clever and able as they come, but as they grow, they grow dreams of their own that never seem to follow yours, and inevitably, they leave you… out the back door, or out the grave.” He stopped again to breathe out more smoke, only slightly more intangible than his words. “She’s one of those. Could leave me any minute she wants and sell herself as an interstellar escort, but she doesn’t… and it’s because of you, Commander. So you’ve done enough.” 

The opening and shutting of drawers, and one of the monitors lit up. Eren shifted in his seat, nearly wanting to raise an objection to talking about her like that but feeling that Levi might reprimand him later for it.

“You’re getting old,” Levi commented. “Rambling is what old people do.”

“Am I? I certainly feel it coming. Or is that the universe speeding up?”

“It _is_ changing. Not for the better.” His tone was awfully dry.

“That’s never a good thing to hear from you, Corporal. Should I be worried for my planet? Worried of people or titans? Of war, famine, or of man’s schemes? Last those plagued, they were all one and the same…”

“You’ll hear it coming if it comes. You keep your ears to the ground.”

“I hope I’ll still have them… You never know what might happen, some of these days,” Enlocke said. “What’s the saying? Look into the abyss and it looks back. Keep my ears out and someday something’ll lurch from the dark and bite them right off.” He sat back, his chair creaking loudly with the movement. “You’ve been given clearance to pass through 239. My men won’t disturb you.”

“That’s all we need,” Erwin said, standing to leave. “Thank you.”

For a second the eyes of the man behind the desk caught the firelight, glinting. “If you want to thank me, leave that piece of eye-candy in here before you leave… I think have a proposal for him.” He was staring straight at Armin, who had his face set into an expression of determination, but there was a thrum of anxiety just beneath.

Erwin paused. “On second thought, I’ll stay. Levi, Eren?” Even though Eren didn’t like Erwin all that much, there was some relief in knowing he would be looking over Armin.

“Right.” Levi tipped his head towards the door. Eren followed him out, blinking owlishly as the door shut behind him, because the door had lead to an entirely different place that they’d come in from. In front of them stretched an unfamiliar, dimly lit, corridor. Eren glanced back at the door, slightly worried, both for him and Armin.

“This place…” he frowned.

“This is always the exit hall. Not only is he a mogul and a shameless pervert, but he’s a master of engineering. What a mind to waste.” So even that pipe messaging system in the room must’ve been designed by Enlocke.

Speaking of minds, “So why did we come here? Couldn’t you have just sent a transmission?”

“Then he’d actually want a blind eye turned to his exports for a month, and we’d have to negotiate with Pyxis for it.”

“How about us? Me and Armin? The commander said yesterday that we might be given a task because we weren’t recognised as Space Corps, but there didn’t seem to be anything we needed to do.”

“He changed his mind.” Levi’s shadows stretched along all the walls, as dark as his expression. “That idiot.” Again, Levi had that look — a mixture between pity and disgust. 

“Was he not going to sleep with Betty if he hadn’t changed his plan?”

“Maybe.”

He felt uneasy, the same concern from before cropping up. “… Don’t you think it seems kind of cruel? Betty? Everyone’s in on it, too, and they just use it for their own ends. Enlocke uses it to keep her working here, and you use it to get his services, and Erwin does it anyway even though he doesn’t love her back.”

“Imagine if he did,” Levi said, the balance more disgust than pity, now. “What a nuisance.”

His shadow stilled as Eren stopped walking. Levi turned back to see Eren tight with anger. “You just called her love a nuisance.”

“I called an imaginary scenario where he reciprocated a nuisance. Is there something wrong with your hearing?”

“She loves him and he leads her on. She loves him and— and you people just use it like a chess piece and move it however you want! Can’t you even spare a moment to think that it’s cruel?!”

“That’s a good lesson for you,” Levi said, folding his arms. “Public love gets used.”

His nonchalance. _Again._ As if he’d completely ignored what Eren had said. Erwin keeping secrets. Levi keeping secrets. Both of them high and mighty. Maybe Levi himself didn’t entertain many emotions, but the least he could do was sympathise! “And you’re so above this? I’m tired of you talking _down_ to me like I don’t know anything—“

Next thing he knew, his head was ringing because his face had hit the cold timber. His feet had been kicked out from under him faster than he could blink and Levi’s boot was against his head. “I give you a lot of rope, Eren,” Levi said, his face darkened with shadows. “You’re already starting to hang yourself with it.”

Eren glared from his place against the floor. “But I still deserve to be treated with some respect like any human being!”

“This _is_ the respect I give any human being before they earn it.” Levi’s foot twisted slightly, tugging his hair. “And there you go, thinking in your black and white. Why don’t I show you something?”

He was hauled up by the collar and down the hallway, where Levi flung open the door and it lead to an alley off the side of the brothel. Then, in a flutter of his cloak, he was leaping up between the walls of the alley, pushing off windowsills, and Eren struggled to follow. 

Levi perched outside a window. As Eren stepped foot onto it, he seized him by the collar again and heaved him forwards. “ _Look_.”

Below the window, inside the building, was some sort of training room filled with mirrors and mats and swinging sandbags. Someone was inside, facing off the bags in a combat stance, fists raised; then they exploded into a flurry of spins and kicks, precisely timed and honed. Blonde hair swung in a ponytail, and hazel eyes flashed. Erwin’s jacket was folded in the corner of the room. It was the beautiful whore, Betty, training her heart out. “What does that look like to you? Someone who gets used and manipulated by other people?”

Eren was forcibly tugged back to staring at Levi, who was close enough that Eren could see the deadly detail in his eyes, the flecks of deeper grey there. “Do you think she actually purely ‘loves’ him? Enlocke’s filled your idyllic head with that all smoke of his. Erwin’s just the kindest person to ever fuck her and actually make her feel good — she likes him and idolises him but we all know that’s tied up in desperate affection where no one else gives her any. Even she’s aware. Everyone but _you_.” Maybe Eren was crazy, Levi’s grim expression so close made his heart beat faster in fight-or-flight. “And I don’t want to have to drag an idiot around the cosmos.”

He found his mouth opening on its own. “What makes you think love has to be pure like that? If I… if _I_ was stuck on X9 and fell in love with someone just because I couldn’t leave the planet, even if there was someone out there I would’ve fallen in love with faster, that doesn’t mean my feelings are invalid! 

“No,” Levi said, his face darker than a grave marker. “Except you _left_ your planet and you were _always_ planning to leave. She’s a caged bird in the process of setting herself free, but she’ll milk it while she can. You think we’re manipulating her? It must be because she’s pretty that your brain’s so stunted. She doesn’t care about our goals; she uses _our_ need for Enlocke to get to Erwin— who, in any other world, she could never even get to _glimpse_. Clever, too, because if she asked for anything more, we’d say _no_.” 

The door below them opened. 

“Levi?” Erwin sounded somewhat amused, followed by Armin who was walking quite close on his heels. “I could hear you from in there.”

Levi gave a noise like a sneer under his breath, and turned away in preparation to jump. 

“You don’t have to, you know,” Eren said, a lot more sullenly, looking down.

“What?”

“You don’t have to drag me around the cosmos. You can leave me anytime you want. You said that, didn’t you?”

There was a long pause where he could feel Levi’s gaze skinning him, and time seemed to pass in dragging seconds. “You really are a fucking idiot,” Levi finally muttered, and for some reason that stunned Eren. Was it for Mikasa? Some other ulterior motive? Some–

Levi leapt down into the alley, cloak flaring, for a moment like a bird of prey, a solemn scarecrow—

—that landed on light feet. And looked back at Eren, expecting him to follow.

Eren did. 

Entranced, because even revelations were slave to gravity, and one was gathering in his hands and spilling over in grains of sand. He followed them whole way back the bustling path to the ship like he’d been muted, Armin casting worried glances back at him.

He was starting to realise that it wasn’t ‘for’ anybody. It was Levi. Levi didn’t leave people behind.

His heart lifted with the thought of it. At the forefront of humanity still stood good people. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why a scarecrow? I know why, but do you?


	5. Sea and whale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter briefly references a sonic boom! To clarify: a sonic boom is not a one-time event once an object breaks the sound barrier. It's a continuously generated pressure wave as long as the object is travelling at supersonic speeds. Higher speeds would change the angle that the sonic boom is produced at, relative to the moving source. (I think. That doesn't really matter.) They're not usually as strong as what is portrayed in the fic. Assume some ambient differences?
> 
> The reason why people think there is only one is that an observer at a stationary point would only hear it once if the object only passed by once :)
> 
> Short chapter that I will make up for with the next one
> 
> also disclaimer: space whales do not exist i'm afraid

 

“Take off your shoes.” Levi and Erwin were standing at the base of the ramp in their socks. “I don’t want you tracking filth in my ship.” To his surprise, Levi’s boots were shoved into his hands beside his own ones. “Consider this repentance.” Then there was a billow of his cloak as he tromped off towards the helm. If he was anyone else, Eren would’ve taken offence, thinking that Levi was somehow degrading him by making him wash the very shoes that had stepped on his head. But he doubted Levi was thinking that far just to subtly insult Eren. 

Erwin smiled. Maybe it was Eren’s shifting perception of him, but his smile almost seemed to be getting more genuine. “You’ll have to get used to this,” Erwin explained patiently. “Take them to wash in your showers — and don’t drip any on your way there.”

“Wait, sir,” Eren said, wanting to get a word in before he left, because he suspected the rest of the time on the ship Erwin would spend cooped up in his quarters. “Why… Why did you take us with you today?”

His smile became a little more enigmatic. “You can ask your friend about that.” Then he, too, swept away. 

“Huh…” Eren said, tipping his head back to look at Armin, eyebrows scrunched, “what happened with you and Enlocke?”

“Well, he asked me to work for him. And some stuff.” Armin looked abashed as they began making their way to their quarters and Eren nearly flared up in indignation. Erwin let some creep put his paws on Armin?! “Which, no. Never. But then he had this report he showed Erwin.”

Mikasa might’ve still been sleeping, so they stepped into Armin’s. “There was a ship that went missing near the planet we’re heading to, and its black box recording got transmitted through. They got… shot down. Attacked by titans, definitely, but someone shot a cannon from what sounded like the surface of the planet. Or maybe there was a titan below them with a cannon.”

“Did the ship go down?” The hot spray of the shower. Them crouching just outside it and kneeling in, rubbing dirt away under a wash of steam and friction.

“Yeah. The crew is probably all dead… But if someone shot them down that means there are people living on the planet — so close to titans! Do you think maybe they have some sort of immunity?”

“I think it’s more likely that they _are_ titans,” Eren said darkly. 

“If they were, shouldn’t titans be a lot cleverer? And, if they’re human, Eren, we have to start thinking about this all differently.” Armin was rubbing the same clean spot absently. “What’s their motivation? Where do they all come from? Why aren’t there any posing as spies in the kingdom? Could it be…”

“What if they’re man-made? People down on that planet are making titans and setting them out on us.”

“The people on that planet might’ve been trying to shoot the titans and have missed. There could be something on that planet that repels titans. Or,” Armin put a shoe down, pausing, “maybe you’re right. Maybe they’re made. Maybe they can’t turn _back_ from titans and they’re just mostly mindless.” 

Dirt swirled the slit-like drains in the wall. The boots in Eren’s hands looked practically new. He had the feeling Levi would be pleased.

“Whatever it is, we’ll be one step closer to the truth when we reach the planet,” Armin said. “And with the truth, we’ll be one step closer to defeating them.”

They shared a smile, and for a second Eren was shocked by nostalgia: squatting to do the washing under the vast starry sky side by side, cold pebbling his skin, his hands warm and wrinkled under splashing hot soapy water, a glow from the lights behind them where Carla was wiping down the cluttered stoves and countertops. When they’d scrubbed out all the stains and hung up the laundry they’d race each other down the streets of the slums where other families were crouched on stools eating around portable stoves with bowls lifted to their mouths, their shoes clattering as they raced by, his fingertips wet and catching the cold, holding them up like they were reaching for the sky and he was dipping them into the inky blackness there and distant moon.

Those days didn’t exist anymore. But he didn’t want them back — he’d taken everything he cared about with him. 

Eren reared up and stood, noticing a hand-dryer that he put the shoes in. “I still haven’t killed one before,” he said, over its whirr of hot air.

“Neither have I. But does the possibility of them being human change anything for you?”

He thought about it for a moment, tilting the shoes this way and that. “They’re not _really_ human… people who betray and eat the rest of their kind lose the right to be called human.”

“I thought you’d say something like that.” 

“Why’d you ask?”

“I don’t know,” Armin said, not looking up. “It’s not really important. I would still do it if I had to. I _need_ to do it, actually, but it makes me wonder. What if I’m killing someone’s mom?”

“If titans can’t turn back, then someone’s lost their mom already.”

“That’s true,” Armin said softly, barely heard over the sound of the hand-dryer. “I shouldn’t worry about it. They might not be people at all, but I’ve always had the feeling…”

“Me too,” Eren agreed. He gathered up Levi’s pair of shoes, prepared to take them back to the captain. “When you fight animals that live in the same place as you, it’s competition. When you fight other people and they hate you and you hate them, it’s a war. I’ve always felt like this was war.”

He thanked Armin for letting him use his shower and then left, thinking about titans and killing, giving a nod to Eld and another man he didn’t recognise as they passed each other in the corridor. Of course, Erwin’s crew was on board as well. He suspected the SOS outclassed any ship, which was probably why they’d taken Levi’s instead of Erwin’s.

Levi was in the helm as expected, Erwin standing behind him with a hand propped up on the back of Levi’s chair and another on the main control panels. They were looking down at something, and Eren noticed that Erwin had put on another pair of thinner-soled leather shoes. “Captain,” he called as he peered in. “I’ve washed your shoes. Do you want me to put them anywhere?” Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure where Levi’s quarters were. He hadn’t seen any that were clearly designated for the captain.

“Here.”

Eren trotted in, the first time he’d been in the helm on his own volition. On the screens he could see the depths of space and stars slowly crossing by, a solar system they were leaving behind. 

“Eren,” Levi said, as Eren knelt to place the pair beside his seat. “Who do you think we should leave up here?”

“What do you mean, captain? Aren’t we all going down to the planet when we arrive?”

“No. Someone to play recordings of my voice to the ship to take it off back to Rose and nuke the planet if it all goes to shit.”

Eren’s thoughts flickered through confusion, startlement, and then a slightly disturbed suspicion. Why was Levi telling him this? He looked at the two of them; Erwin was watching him, and Levi was disinterestedly scrolling through his control panel, the lights from it illuminating the contours of his face.

“Do you do this every time, sir? Captain?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Eren said, sitting back on his heels. This was a test. “Then you probably have someone who is prepared and willing to sit here while the rest of the crew is in danger, and you don’t need to be asking me.”

“Would you be willing to do it?” Erwin asked. 

Without hesitation, “No. I might be the most unprofessional and untrained person here… but I can’t ever prove myself and train further if I don’t do anything about it.”

Levi gave a soundless laugh, more of an exhale than anything else.

Erwin said, “I worry that you three don’t have what it takes to sacrifice yourselves for humanity.”

“They do,” Levi said, propping an elbow on the side of his chair. “Just look at them and their weeping hearts. It’s not a matter of whether they have a fire, but whether they’ll burn themselves out. Eren. This isn’t for proving yourself. This is going down there and fighting until you’re covered in nothing but blood and sweat and digging in corpses for answers a thousand miles away from home.”

“I don’t have a home.”

“That’s right. I forgot about that.” He waved a hand as if dismissive. “The only home you care about is here, right? With your two stubborn-headed friends. You won’t sit back here because you think you have to protect them. I can leave Armin with you, if you want.” 

“No, sir,” Eren said, his fists clenching. He didn’t like Levi trying to pry him for his motivations, or trying to ‘tempt’ him into staying. It was an insult! As if Eren would ever even consider it! “If we wanted to be safe, we would never have boarded your ship in the first place.”

“X2229 isn’t a very safe planet.”

“We’re here to fight!” He stared ahead of him, thinking about the weight of a blade in his hand, the feeling of the wind whipping around him as he squeezed the lever on his 3DMG. “If you want to leave me here because you think I’m the most worthless, I won’t accept it! Captain! My entire life _is_ for defeating titans! It _is_ for freedom and the day we can look up without wondering if something’s out there looking back! You talk about sacrificing ourselves for humanity — but we three _have_ already given up everything else for even the chance to be here! Please!” 

He threw himself onto the floor, teeth gritted, eyes burning. “We won’t let you down! I can’t sit back when I know other people are fighting for me and fighting for humankind!”

“It’s soldiers like him,” Levi said to Erwin, at the same time as Erwin said, “There’s no need for you to plead with us like that, Eren. We weren’t going to leave you. No one needs to stay on the ship because the destruction command is automated if the Ackermans connected to it die.”

Eren sat back, still staring into an undefined point in the hull of the ship, feeling like his whole body was lighting up with some fizzling electricity inside. 

It _had_ been a test. He’d known it’d been a test, and he’d done it all anyway. Armin probably would’ve seen through it at the start, Mikasa would’ve just demanded an answer, but Eren hadn’t — though he didn’t care, and he didn’t regret a word. 

“I don’t leave my crew anywhere.” —Eren’s face burst into a smile— “And be glad you’re a soldier and nothing else.” Levi muttered, “Imagine if _you_ were that glaringly sincere, Erwin. We would’ve gotten wiped by every negotiation we tried.”

“There’s nothing wrong with sincerity.” Erwin looked over at Eren, and gave him a nod. “And I’m sorry. I apologise deeply for misleading you like this. It was my idea, not Levi’s.”

Eren had kind of suspected so. Levi would’ve just seized him by the collar and interrogated him on how determined he was to fight. “It’s alright,” he said, and it really was. Eren had walked into it open-eyed. “Why, though?”

“Erwin’s—” Levi answered, but stopped when Erwin cut him an sharp look. Levi shrugged, as if uncaring of the warning, though he must have followed it anyway. “We had to figure what to do with you. But I think we can keep you around.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Erwin said, stepping back. “I’ll go haze Armin.”

He left, and Eren was again in the helm alone, sitting on the floor, while Levi looked indifferent in his seat. “Was that really necessary?” Eren asked.

“You won’t believe how many overexcited soldiers want to be here, even ones who have graduated well or have experience out in the field. They just want to prove themselves and go back home as heroes, but there’s no one here to prove themselves to. Heroism is a consequence.” Levi examined his nails. “They come here overjoyed, get injured or watch someone die. Then we send them back home.”

“I’ve seen—“

“I know you have.” He turned in his chair. “What do you know about stars, Eren?”

He was struck off guard by the change in topic. “…What type of star? Heroes, like you? Or sun stars?”

“A little bit of both. Cosmos.”

“Only a bit,” Eren admitted. Armin had always been the one more interested in the science behind stars. Eren saw them as things to aspire for. 

“When most stars run out of fuel, their outer layers drift apart. They fade into space. When the bigger stars go out, they explode. But they burn through their lifespans thousands of times quicker. You understand, don’t you?” Levi locked him with his dark eyes. “The more you burn and the more you push yourself, the quicker you’ll die.”

He was trying to warn Eren, but Eren felt strangely indignant — on whose behalf, he wasn’t sure — because _Levi_ was the one who had encouraged him to try harder in the first place! Was Levi getting cold feet? “ _You_ haven’t died yet, captain.”

“Why do you think I’m training your friend?” 

Eren didn’t answer. In his mind, he didn’t believe someone like Levi could, or would, ever die. Not before all the titans were defeated. Maybe it showed on his face.

“You were right there when it happened and when we came to investigate.” Levi leaned forwards, seeing into the past, when they first met. “Someone on your planet lost a shipment of warp drive cores.”

His words were like a thousand gears clicking into place, or safeties being pulled back. He had the feeling that he was on the brink of a revelation of some kind. “Oh,” Eren said.

“They used to be stupid, just drifting around in space, blackened and burned and brain-dead. Now their eyes follow you and they’ve been robbing graves. I don’t intend to die, but I have to take precautions.” He paused. “You better be a good soldier, Eren. As your captain, I’ll fire you if you don’t.”

In a flurry of movement Eren stood and strode forwards and slammed both his hands on one of the seat’s armrests. He looked straight at Levi. “Sir, I’ll make sure to fight hard for you and the rest of humanity!” He straightened, planted out a foot so that they were shoulder-width apart and saluted — the proper one this time. Levi almost looked amused. 

“It’ll take a while to get where we’re going,” Levi said instead. “Go get some sleep.”

“How about you, captain?”

“I sleep here.” Levi turned away and gave a little shooing gesture. “Go on. I’ve seen enough of you today.”

“Goodnight, captain!” Eren called before he stepped out of the helm. Encounters with Levi always seemed to leave him with a cocktail of emotions, wild and turbulent, neon-coloured like swirling plasma lights. Inspired. He thought it was because Levi epitomised everything his life revolved around. Few people were as dedicated to the war as Levi was. Levi had lost friends, family — Eren was assuming —, love, and time, all to the war. As the captain of the ship and the figurehead of humanity, people were undoubtably drawn to him. It was like a gravitational pull. Eren, and everybody else, was just stuck in orbit.

*

Hurried footsteps. The door slid open to Armin’s quarters. “Armin!” Eren said, sounding like he was barely holding back shouting his excitement. 

“Huh?” 

One of the buttons in the panel was punched and the opacity of the opposite wall fell away. Before them spread space, like paint that had been smeared by a giant’s arm, punctured with holes of light. “There’s something incredible outside! Look!” Armin scrambled off his bed and then they were at the wall, staring upwards.

Above them drifted a planet that seemed as huge as the sun, deep royal azure like a spinning, living, marble; but their eyes were drawn to something smaller than the planet that was immense in its own right. Before the turning sea of blue was silhouetted something curved and misshapen, pale like bleached bone. From it stretched gargantuan fins that seemed more like wings, or a thousand fingers floating, tendrils through the very fabric of space that thinned into millions of tentacles that sailed behind it. Under those wings, rib-like knuckles pressed out from its insides, ridging its skin that was all contoured into one sinuous shape — starting from its arched tail in a wave-like sweep down the muscles of its body and tapering at its eye, beaded and sunken in and only a dark point from where they could see. 

Under its skin it seemed to be simmering with lights that gathered like electrons in a circuit in its open mouth, some definition-less mass that lined the insides of its glistening maw, tangled together like a cloud of stars. It soared, too enormous to care about an infinitesimal ship passing by.

“So they aren’t smooth at all,” Eren murmured. There they were, in the abyss of nothing, the darkness of it, a square of light where two recruits — and Mikasa was watching in the next room over — had their palms pressed against the wall. A window in the pitch-black space between the stars. Eyes unveiled.

*

“We’re arriving in an hour. Get up, get ready.” The ship-wide comm crackled off.

He wasn’t certain how much time had passed. It’d been several sleep cycles, at least, and Eren had discovered a room he’d previously thought empty was often used for training. The button he’d thought did nothing turned off the artificial gravity field in it — it wasn’t enabled in normal sleeping quarters — and there he’d try to spar with Mikasa, Armin, and, surprisingly, the rest of the crew. While Petra was patient with him, other crew members had him tumbling around in a matter of seconds. He still enjoyed it and welcomed the challenge.

Erwin, at times, he’d spot in the halls; Levi always seemed to be in the helm; Mikasa and Eren were always training; Armin disappeared to play chess; and the rest of the crew would appear in the kitchen at different times. No one’s sleep schedule seemed to be aligned, and while this meant that there was never a time that they were off-guard, there were no hours where anyone could be particularly rowdy, either. Eren suspected maybe Levi had planned this all so that no one would be very noisy — because Levi was rarely asleep, he always kept the helm door open, and he disliked any too cantankerous business.

Whenever he happened to be in the vicinity, Eren peeked in to ask Levi if he wanted anything to eat or drink. Levi, as he found out, liked tea, but drank it only sparingly because there wasn’t much, and simply ate the bog-standard packaged ration. 

Some days as well the ship would tilt wildly as they dodged some titan that was drifting alone in space, and it’d become increasingly more common. Eren had almost accustomed himself to the movement of the ship by then, finding the nearest wall to brace himself when it happened. Today was one of these, and soon after it passed he heard voices coming from the helm. He made his way closer and heard an unfamiliar person speaking, as well as the voice of the overly excited woman called Hanje who was always in the medical bay that doubled as a science bay. Was there a transmission?

Levi glanced back. With a snap of his fingers, the helm door slid shut and all noise was sealed off. “Hey!” Eren protested, rapping on the door. He waited sullenly outside. They would have to come out at some point. Or, at least, Erwin would. But Levi had cameras all over the ship, didn’t he? They could just wait for some point that Eren went to the bathroom to… They didn’t have to avoid Eren at all. They could just refuse to answer his questions.

Other crew members were starting to emerge from their quarters, dressed in their combat gear, 3DGMs in their hands, boots clean and on. He spotted Mikasa down the corridor. “Eren,” she said, once she got close, “go get ready.”

“But—“ He looked back, at the closed door. “I want to know what they’re talking about.”

“Waiting won’t help that.”

Recognising the truth of her words — why did Mikasa have to be right all the time? — he hurried off to get changed and find his 3DGM gear, and put on his skin-suit that resisted changes in pressure. Petra had told him it was usual protocol to wear them: sometimes planets had greater atmospheric pressure changes than space itself. 

Before he could return, the ship spun. “Stations!” Levi’s voice came over the intercoms. “We have a surge in titan numbers. Turbulent entry!”

There were boots clambering in the hallways. The three of them didn’t have blade-ships and so weren’t permitted to engage in combat in space, so Eren hurried the opposite way where the crew was headed, towards the helm. That was also where the air-lock was, if things fell apart. The helm door was open, Mikasa and Armin were already inside, and Eren nearly crashed into Hanje and Erwin. “I’m sorry!” he blurted out, and he only caught a fragment of an _it’s absolutely fine!_ before he was ducking inside. 

“What’s happening?” he asked as he stepped in. The ship pulled another sharp turn and he stumbled, Mikasa and Armin bracing themselves against the walls. There were titans everywhere on every screen, lumbering and looming but too slow to catch the blades swirling around them, eerie heads tilted down from where their necks had been severed. Blood seeped slowly into space. 

The planet was close. It was a darkened orb of dull yellow and blue, and they were heading for its atmosphere like a bullet — the dark side, where it was still night. As it grew closer it ate up their vision.

Behind them, what Eren had thought was an entire moon began to move. It was like watching a constellation shift. It uncoiled in a huge exhale of steam, ligaments stretching out, a million times larger than their ship, and Eren just saw a blade-ship crumple in its hands before they hit the atmosphere and everything was engulfed in cloud that was burning and crackling with the speed that they tore through. The floor beneath him trembled and the vibrations sparked through his very bones.

Levi’s hands were flying across buttons and he was shouting orders that got mingled in Eren’s ears under the roar of his blood. He heard something like _ocean, I repeat, we are landing in the ocean,_ before Mikasa was sprinting for the door but stopped to stare in horror as the clouds tore apart and there was a whole black sea in front of them, waves surging as tall as buildings and darkened by the night. And titans, lying face-up in the endless sway of water, their eyes sightless as the planet rocked them to sleep. 

The ship pulled up sharply and spun, wheeling away from the sea, Levi cursing a storm, at the same moment their sonic boom hit the waves and the water spurted up as though boiled. Blood beneath titan skin that had been softened by liquid burst to life and there were shards of wet bones as the pressure exploded and titans erupted from inside out.Eyelids were opening, eyeballs turning, red eyeballs, where capillaries had ruptured; mouths open, sloshing with water, sluggish hands; a whole sea of hands groping into the air as one grotesque, bleeding, soup. 

“Do we even want to land, captain?!” Eren grabbed the back of Levi’s seat. 

The ship only seemed to go faster, engine thundering for a distant horizon of land. “We’re landing. It’s night. They won’t follow.” Above them blade ships appeared out from the clouds, following Levi in a steady formation, but they weren’t enough to account for everyone who’d been on the crew. 

“What happened to the colossal titan?” Levi demanded into his communicators.

“It wouldn’t enter the planet, sir!”

“Its mass would throw the entire planet out of orbit if it landed, Levi!” Hanje was speaking. “Do you think it knew?”

“I don’t know what these shits know anymore,” Levi responded. “Scout ahead. Erwin, did you enter ahead? We need somewhere to land and to comb this entire planet and follow the night.”

Eren’s heart was thundering in his chest from the exhilaration of it all. Titans. Eyes. Fingers. Blood. 

“Levi.” It was Erwin. Behind them the living sea was fading back into sluggishness, hands collapsing back under the waves like trees falling soundlessly. “We found it already. There’s a village in the plains here. Sending co-ordinates now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That ocean scene is, _hands_ down, my favourite :^)


End file.
